Women Are Showing Off Their Armpit Hair to Protest Beauty Standards in China “A competition ba

Women Are Showing Off Their Armpit Hair to Protest Beauty Standards in China“A competition based on women’s bodies doesn’t sound like the type of activity a women’s rights activist would support. But in China, an online contest in which women are posting selfies of their armpits has a radical aim: subverting taboos about hairy underarms. Hosted on the Chinese blogging site Weibo, the contest was launched late last month by the prominent feminist Xiao Meili. Winners will be determined not by the length, thickness, or texture of their armpit hair, but by the number of social shares and “likes” attached to each submission. Consider it as a competitive, visual means of challenging double standards about beauty and celebrating women’s bodies—in all their natural forms.“Men have more freedom in terms of what to do with their bodies,” Meili, 25, told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday. “I’m not calling on everybody to grow underarm hair. I’m just saying if some people don’t want to shave, the rest of us should not think their underarm hair is disgusting, unhygienic, uncivil or not feminine enough.”Meili, the organizer of the armpit contest, is no stranger to political activism. Last year, she drew international headlines when she walked more than 1,000 miles from Beijing to Guangzhou to raise awareness about sexual violence and child sex abuse. China's first law addressing domestic violence was drafted late last year, but advocates say the language is too weak because it doesn’t explicitly address sexual violence, and survivors of assault are often victimized, not protected.”Read the full piece here -- source link

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