Hello, I'm cute

Now that we all have online profiles, whether it’s something vaguely professional liked LinkedIn or it’s Facebook or just your profile at some Ning site, I’m seeing a lot of photos. Photos of people. Photos of women, ordinary women, confronted with the sudden need to look sexy.

I’m not talking about bikini shots on your CV website or anything ridiculous like that. I’m talking about the pressure to at least look “cute” online.
Because we all know snapshots are so cruel in their variability – you get one where you look great and one where you were having a great time but you look sweaty and tired and horribly old.

Think of the hundreds of work minutes wasted by a million women trawling through photos to find the right one to post!

And as a vain person, believe me I am not immune.

(There’s always the “photo of your kitten” route, but then people like me who forget names get confused. Like there’s a guy on Facebook who friended me with a picture of a – I guess *his* -- dog, and I have no clue who he is. I’m sure I do know him, I could just click “accept” but it bothers me.)

Hairless

So I shave. Not everything (!) but my legs and armpits. I lived for many years in a European country where, contrary to American assumptions, shaving was mandatory. That is, almost everybody did it, and if you didn’t, you were gross. I didn’t want to be gross, so I shaved.

Before that, I went to college in a pretty hippyfied town where it was cool grunge nature girl not to shave – a trend I also slavishly followed, in my purple plaid, flannel men’s shirt and too big green corduroys.

But now I’m back in America, and I still shave…but sometimes I wonder why.

Well, honestly, I still do it to conform. The only problem is, what am I conforming with? I mean, why are women supposed to be hairless? Because it references youth –- and as the parent of an actual naturally hairless pre-pre-prepubescent girl, I am kind of disturbed by my own behavior.

But not enough to stop shaving.