Likewise I find epilation of (female) legs costly and stupid and founded mostly on selling women the idea that we can only be attractive if we spend lots of time and money MODIFYING ourselves from our original format. I still DO it occasionally - but I'm conflicted and annoyed about it, it hardly feels like a choice I'm making really freely; it's under huge pressure of being called things like "disgusting" quite loudly in public, a phenomenon I've witnessed far too many times in the past from people I had mistaken for kind or reasonable human beings up to that point.
I tend to agree on this point, at least that if you want to shave or modify something, do it for yourself rather than because of sheep pressure. I have a full, luxurious back of hair. I don't shave or wax it. Full disclosure: it's
not because (1) I find back hair attractive, (2) I'm trying to save money on back hair maintenance, or (3) I'm trying to stand out from the crowd. It's because (4) I'm too lazy to care about it. As a result, I'm married to a wonderful woman that also seems to find back hair kinda sexy. Go figure, lucky me.
My daughter doesn't shave either, maybe she inherited my laziness (actually, I think she's rebelling against the notion that women have to shave or else..). I've never actually discussed it with her SO, but he doesn't seem to have an issue with it.
I think first and foremost,
know that you are
beautiful. Then if you still want to shave, use makeup, cream, wax, goop, eat diet "food", etc, go for it. Hard to do with TV though. I think if I told someone that a chicken was a duck 80 - 100 times a day for a year or so, they'd probably believe it was a duck. From what I recall, the most prevalent message on TV (explicitly in the commercials and implicitly in the programming) was, "You're not quite beautiful enough, but you could be if you just bought [insert whatever nonsense I'm selling here]." I doubt that's changed much considering how big the beauty industry is.