Americans are brainwashed that body hair is dirty, ugly and extremely unattractive.

Everyone is overly concerned with eradicating body hair to the extent of shaving, waxing, using depilatories and even threading it away. Some girls as young as 12 are getting Brazilian waxes that have nothing to do with the South American country.

The paparazzi had a heyday when Julia Roberts exposed her armpit hair at a London movie premiere in the late ’90s. But why is our culture obsessed with body hair?

Some people are turned on by body hair. Maybe you love boys with back hair or think your girlfriend’s leg hair is the cutest thing ever. I personally think bearded boys are the epitome of dreamboats. But generally speaking, most people find excessive body hair in “inappropriate” places downright disgusting.

Most of the women I talked to in an informal campus survey shave regularly and are repulsed by hair on any place but their heads. Some of the women expressed their overall hatred for hair on anyone else, especially other hairy female armpits. Others were accepting of individual cosmetic choices but preferred to shave themselves.

The men I talked to were mostly concerned with going bald and were disgusted by women with unconventional spots for hair growth, like on the face, arms and legs.

There is a hypocritical standard of body hair in North American culture. Body hair is a sign of sexuality when it is in the correct place, but it is considered undesirable anywhere else. Females with long, flowing locks are the pinnacle of femininity, but hair anywhere else is a faux pas. It is generally more acceptable for men to have random dense patches of body hair and be bearded symbols of virility, but male pattern baldness is feared because it is considered unattractive.

According to a December 2003 article in The Economist, there were about the same number of women in America getting boob jobs as there were men getting hair implants.

Women are as afraid of having body hair as men are of not having hair. But maybe men aren’t supposed to have hair past middle age and women are supposed to have armpit gardens.

There are numerous sociological and biological reasons for body hair. It’s a protective barrier to certain vulnerable parts of the body. Charles Darwin was a fan of shaving in warmer climates in order to keep the human body free from little, nasty parasites.

An alleged reason for the Sisyphean chore of female leg shaving is attributed to the 1920s flappers because the short-skirt fashion necessitated smooth legs. But apart from protection against disease and 20th-Century fashion sense, body hair today is removed for other reasons.

In a study examining the correlation between women’s politics and sexual preference and the presence of leg and underarm hair, Susan Basow, professor of psychology at Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College, found that women who have hairy legs identified themselves as “very strong feminists and/or as not exclusively heterosexual.” But this is just another example of the great beauty fallacy that forces people to conform to stereotypes. Your body hair is a political statement? It’s from sheer laziness? You simply love hair? Well, you must be an unfeminine woman.

Without undermining the repercussions of unrealistic beauty expectations, or, for that matter, the need for a body hair riot, it is a secret boon that the United States can have a preoccupation with body image. Other areas, such as the Middle East and Africa, don’t even have the chance to criticize and challenge the cultural implications of media images and beauty practices.

Some might believe hair growth is the battle that feminism lost. But that would imply the women’s movement is over. And it’s not.

I say the battle is just beginning.

Don’t be afraid of going bald or letting a little hair show – it can be a statement against the fascist beauty standards of Western society. If people can accept personal choices of having body hair or not having body hair, we can have ourselves a good ol’ body-hair riot with some bald men and hairy-legged ladies.

There is no problem with voluntary removal of body hair, as it is a personal preference, but people should not feel forced to annually spend hundreds of dollars to painfully remove every hair, and should instead consider not being so consumed by a socially-constructed body image.

Body hair isn’t gross, it’s natural.

Start a rebellion and start loving your body. Body hair acceptance could be the gateway to the universal love of all body types.