@laureth: Exactly. My point was not that we shouldn’t shave or adorn our bodies, it is that we shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed if our image doesn’t conform to some arbitrary cultural standard. In the west, that standard has been usurped and monetized by the media and the HABA industry. We are shown icons of unreachable, hyperreal beauty, then made to feel substandard. Buying the (often harmful) products to improve our scent, remove our hair, and color our skin holds the promise that we, too, can be beautiful. While all along, that same media dangles Doritos and beer in front of us.
My 8 year old daughter has dark arm hair, and she is already being picked on. That is a sad, sad, situation. Our media reaches into even our youngest minds and conditions them to conform, to buy, to modify our behaviors – not by our own desires, but by those imposed upon us.
BTW, @SeventhSense, I’m not a hippie. I shave my face, use shampoo, Q-Tips and deodorant. Like you declare in your profile, I am also an art educator and free-thinker; qualities that, I assumed, were consistent with tolerance and civility.