Legs and the patriarchy

Now that it's what passes for summer, it seems as though you can’t open a magazine without seeing an article about “beach bodies”, “summer pins” and whatnot. I have merrily ignored such articles for the last twenty summers (I said that mostly for dramatic effect. The first eight years don’t really count) but for some reason, this time around I felt a strange guilt creeping in. Not so much regarding the “beach body” – show me a diet that can get rid of my stomach in ten days flat, and I’ll show you a diet that will have me hospitalised – but definitely my legs. I’m not normally self-conscious about them, but then again, they’re usually covered up by gloriously thick black tights. However, I’m terrible in the heat, so the less clothes the better, really. I’d prefer to look ridiculous than to overheat. Or even worse, have to spend our rare lovely days curled up in a pair of thick black tights, overheating.

Gramatically incorrect

Without sounding like a moany self-deprecator, my legs are potentially the worst part of me. I can recognise that without feeling bad about it, but lately I’ve been analysing ‘em and wondering just what I can do to make them look better. I blame the heat, but also the sheer volume of legs that have been on show lately. Skinny legs, fat legs, tanned to perfection. Legs riddled with cellulite shoved into tiny denim shorts. One particular leg that it looked like a shark had attacked. Tattooed legs. Most of all, pale legs – though none, I would argue, so pale as mine. I am milk-bottle. I am computer tan. If you showed a coroner my legs, he’d probably tag me and notify my family. I am paler than pale, scarred with shaving bumps and lumps, and plagued by weird spots that refuse to go away no matter how much I moisturise. Which brings me (sort of) to my next issue.

Shaving is a big deal. Caitlin Moran, somewhat memorably, wrote about it in “How To Be A Woman” (“Take your furry minge to Dublin, I say!”) and it’s something that feminists get slightly up in arms about. To shave or not to shave, that is the question.  Nobody can deny that it’s an absolute bitch to have to do. No matter how expensive my razors are, I always end up lacerated in several places. What’s more, some outcrops of hair simply refuse to be mown down, and I notice them in the middle of Stephen’s Green six hours later. “Damn you, hair!” I think, wondering if Sellotape would take them off. My leg hair is super dark, so believe me, you notice it. But back to feminism…I’ve actually been asked why I shave my legs if I’m a feminist, if you can believe it. I do it because I want to. Because right now, my slightly bleedy legs feel like dolphins.  Who doesn’t want that?! If you don’t, more power to you, you’re not spending a fiver on razors every six weeks.

“But…Áine. Your legs don’t look that much better shaved. They’re still bumpy and now they’ve got cuts all over them!” This brings me to my final argument, the argument that started the blog post: I don’t really care. The previously mentioned magazines very much typify the “typical” woman, assuming she wants beautifully tanned, toned legs. Assuming she wouldn’t look like two-tone chocolate spread if she did use tan. Or worse, freckled.  Because women’s magazines can be such a useful tool for the patriarchy, it’sbetter to ignore them, I find. Newsflash, kids: if anything is telling a woman how her body should be (browner, skinner, more muscular, blonder, sexier…you get the picture) it’s an instrument of the patriarchy, which is there, of course, to PUT US ALL INTO OUR PLACES AS WOMEN. “Woman should look like this!” grunts the patriarchy. “Woman no look like this. This no reachable standard for woman. But trying to look like this keep woman busy and stop her getting into trouble. Fake tan and 5:2 diet keep woman quiet”. It bloody worked, too.

So, I propose a backlash – a proper one.  It is this: we stop buying fake tan. We stop shaving. We let our gorgeous – genuinely, because no matter how pale, freckly, scarred or fat your are, you are inherently sexy – women’s bodies run free. God knows I do. My forays into fake tan have been scary for most, and 9/10 times my legs are not a bottlenose dolphin, but a forest. But when I do shave or tan, or do anything to change my beautiful self, I do it for myself. My legs are mine, in all their awful glory,and I love them. I’m going to show them off, tan-free and just a little bit unevenly shaved. I haven’t done this for Heat! or Marie Claire, and I definitely haven’t done it for the Goddamn Sexist Marketing Campaigns. I’ve done it  because I like dolphins and because I can use my beautifully silky legs to entice men (and ladies) and then teach them all about smashing the patriarchy.