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Identify how agency, objectification, or sexualization comes into…
Identify how agency, objectification, or sexualization comes into play in one statement or portion of this article please.
Shaved or Saved? Disciplining Women’s Bodies
CASEY RYAN KELLY AND KRISTEN E. HOERL
Proponents of sexual liberation and abstinence-until-marriage advocates appear to
be on opposing ends of the sociopolitical spectrum; however, both are invested in
the regulation of women’s vaginas. We argue that the rhetoric of both communities
produces the same disciplinary configuration for the control of women’s bodies.
Both communities instruct women that the appearance of a prepubescent and pure
vagina is essential to sexual appeal and self-care. Whether sex positive or sex
negative, both communities articulate a model of sexual health that negates women’s
status as active, desiring subjects. Ultimately, we argue that public scrutiny of
women’s vaginas implicitly and overtly functions to police women’s sexual agency.
Smoother, Tighter, and Whiter
The rhetoric of the U.S. beauty industry routinely conflates intimate cosmetic care
with women’s liberation and sexual health. Waxing and other vaginal cosmetic proce-
dures are marketed as enactments of personal choice, sexual autonomy, and proper
self-care. Contemporary beauty culture celebrates women’s sexual agency by urging
them to purchase products and engage in practices designed to prepare their vaginas
for sexual activity with men. The number of genital cosmetic surgeries designed to
decrease the size of the labia and clitoris, tighten the vagina, or reconstruct the hymen
has risen markedly since 2002 (Liao & Creighton, 2007). Further, a variety of pro-
ducts promise to whiten women’s ”sensitive skin areas” and tighten their vaginal walls
(”Dr. Pinks Review,” 2014). Despite the cosmetic industry’s message of health and
empowerment, it exploits bodily aesthetics that privilege male sexual pleasure and
take a physical toll on women’s bodies.1
The cosmetic industry also routinely suggests that women can advance their
sexual liberation by waxing or shaving their pubic hair. Since 2000, a variety of female
celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow, Victoria Beckham, and
Eva Longoria, have recommended waxing, cultivating the idea that sexually empow-
ered women should have no pubic hair. Kim Kardashian famously declared that
women ”shouldn’t have hair anywhere but their heads” (Fetters, 2011). The
hairless ideal has been perpetuated by the popularity of a cosmetic procedure known
as the Brazilian wax, in which women’s pubic hair is removed completely by applying
heated wax to a woman’s labia and then removing the wax and hair from the skin. In
2000, the postfeminist television series Sex and the City popularized the Brazilian wax
when heroine Carrie Bradshaw had the procedure done and concluded, ”I feel like
I’m nothing but walking sex” (Ledgerwood, 2014). More recently, the E! Network
series Kourtney and Kim Take Miami aired a scene in which Kourtney Kardashian
gives her sister Khloe an at-home Brazilian wax treatment so that Khloe’s boyfriend
will not see her as ”a hairy beast” (”Kourtney and Khloe’s,” 2010). The Kardashian
franchise, along with other popular media programming, instructs young women to
tame their vaginas once they reach pubertyif not before. Women’s fashion maga-
zines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour teach women how to discipline their ”hairy
beasts” by regularly offering shaving and waxing advice, including information about
what to expect during your first Brazilian wax (Shapouri, 2009) and the latest in
skin-numbing creams (”Get a Perfect Bikini Line,” 2014). Visual discourses of adver-
tising, fashion magazines, and pornography also provide implicit instruction about
the appeal of pubic hair removal.
The cosmetics industry’s putatively empowered female aesthetic aligns with the
objectified pornographic body. Physicians specializing in vaginal reconstructive
surgeries have reported patients who brought along images from advertisements
or pornography to illustrate their desired appearance (Liao and Creighton, 2007,
p. 1091). Playboy magazine has been a leader in the trend idealizing the hairless
and small vagina. Starting in the new millennium, ”minimal pubic hair, invisible
labia minora, narrow hips, and a low BMI” were increasingly common among
centerfold models (Schick, Rima, & Calabrese, 2001, p. 77). Schick and colleagues
(2001) conclude that the appearance of women’s genitals in the magazine increas-
ingly emulates the incomplete sexual anatomy of the Barbie doll.
This pubic discourse may be persuasive. Almost 60% of 18- to 24-year-old
women have completely removed their pubic hair at least once, and 20% do so regu-
larly (Herbenick, Schick, Reece, Sanders, & Fortenberry, 2010). Despite promoting
women’s sexual empowerment, the cosmetic industry’s idealization of a hairless,
small vagina does not necessarily promote women’s sexual agency (Labre, 2002).
Moreover, such an ideal vagina resembles that of a prepubescent girl. The cosmetic
industry’s overweening attention to the proper aesthetics of women’s vaginas pro-
motes the appearance and feel of an ostensibly sexually inexperienced woman whose
primary role is to fulfill men’s desires.
Pure and Impure
From an opposing perspective, the abstinence-until-marriage movement also fetishizes
the inexperienced girl. Abstinence advocates offer sexual ecstasy within marriage as
the reward for remaining chaste, imploring young women to bequeath their virginity
as a ”gift” to their husbands. The abstinence movement has rendered chastity ”sexy,”
making it the subject of a contradictory series of messages that both admonishes ado-
lescent girls for their sexual desires and valorizes their inexperience as ”worth the wait”
(Gardner, 2011). Bolstered by $1.5 billion in federal assistance for abstinence-only
curricula, the abstinence-until-marriage movement has grown to include hundreds
of youth ministries, outreach organizations, and millions of young adherents (Sexu-
ality Information and Education Council of the US, 2013). Premarital virginity is
valorized as a personal and political ideal in best-selling Christian literature, at rock
festivals, at school assemblies, and at purity ballsfather-daughter dances that
conclude with ritualistic virginity pledges (Manning, 2015). In addition to elected
officials like President George W. Bush, movement advocates have included popular
142 C. R. Kelly and K. E. Hoerlfigures such as Miley Cyrus, Julianne Hough, Selena Gomez, Bristol Palin, Jessica
Simpson, Jordin Sparks, Brittany Spears, the Jonas Brothers, and Tim Tebow.
Abstinence culture also offers instructions for the proper expression of women’s
sexuality. In the discourse governing this culture, women’s sexuality is fundamentally
male property. For instance, father-daughter purity balls are consummated with a
daughter’s vow of chastity to her father until marriage. In exchange, the father
pledges to ”cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity”
(Wilson, 2007). These commitments suggest that a father exercises sovereignty over
his daughter’s vagina until ownership passes to her husband (Fahs, 2010). Ostensibly,
young women’s sexual desirability hinges on remaining ”daddy’s little girl” until
marriage. The notion that chastity is sexy makes it imperative that women appear
childlike to be attractive to their future husbands. Moreover, sexual-abstinence
apparel articulates a pedophilic desire for inexperienced girls. In 2009, the Candie’s
Foundation created a line of T-shirts advocating abstinence, bearing such phrases
as ”I’m sexy enough to keep you waiting” and ”Be sexy: It doesn’t mean you have
to have sex” (Collins, 2009). Paradoxically, virginity apparel cultivates hyperaware-
ness of adolescent girls’ sexuality, if not arousal at the thought of their sexual
potential. While sex is delayed until marriage, abstinence culture offers immediate
voyeuristic pleasures for male spectators.
While abstinence discourse constructs the untouched female body as pure, the
movement considers sexually active young women to be immoral, used, and dirty
(Bernau, 2007). Several student exercises in abstinence-only curricula teach the vir-
tues of remaining pristine and untouched. With a special emphasis on preserving
adolescent women’s purity, these exercises imply that sexually mature and
autonomous women have finite value. For example, during the ”peppermint patty”
exercise, the instructor passes an unwrapped chocolate candy around the room then
asks for a volunteer to eat it. The instructor then declares, ”No one wants food that
has been passed around. Neither would you want your future husband or wife to
have been passed around” (Hess, 2014). Other exercises ask students to chew used
gum, drink another student’s saliva, or use someone else’s toothbrush. As one advo-
cate argues, ”Just like a used car, your value goes down with every mile you add to
your sexometer” (DiMarco, 2006, n.p.). The nonrenewability of female virginity
renders sexually active women depleted and ultimately disposable. The overarching
lesson of abstinence discourse is that adult women who seek sexual autonomy are
revolting, while young girls who remain in a state of preadolescent innocence are
desirable.
Infantile Politics
What ultimately unites sexual liberation and abstinence-until-marriage discourses is
anxiety regarding women’s sexual and political agency. The fetishization of infantile
female bodies is an extension of reactionary social forces that counteract contempor-
ary feminism. Postfeminist media culture relies on positive, carefree, and sexualized
images of feminine youthfulness to construct a portrait of feminism as archaic and
antiquated (Projansky, 2007). Tasker and Negra (2007) argue that the ”aggressive
mainstreaming” of women’s health and beauty regimes is sutured to the postfeminist
imperative to supplant enthusiasm for women’s political empowerment with guilt-free
consumerism (p. 3). The valorization of girlhood in postfeminist culture helps
dispense with the voices of women who demand political and sexual autonomy.
Shaved or Saved? Disciplining Women’s Bodies 143Ostensibly, women with adult desires and political interests are mean-spirited, shrill,
and unattractive. Despite their ideological differences, discourse extolling the virtues
of waxing and imploring girls to preserve their purity suggest that the ideal form of
feminine subjectivity is docile and lacking in sexual experience.
These opposing discourses construct a model of sexual health premised on sus-
taining the primacy of male pleasure. Any discussion of women’s pleasure and sexual
health is conspicuously absent. Postfeminist discourses about sexuality elide alterna-
tive models of sexual empowerment that emphasize women’s multifaceted fulfillment,
which can take the form of ”a desire for intimacy, love, curiosity, fantasy, mutuality,
respect, adventure, and joy” (Bakare-Yusuf, 2013, p. 30). An alternative conception
of sex positivity would affirm a range of expressions of sexual desires instead of
circumscribing bodily discipline as the only means to acceptable pleasure. Indeed,
women need not be shaved or saved to be empowered.
