Should I let my nine-year-old daughter wax her moustache?

Female facial hair is a natural trait shared by fur-covered mammals, yet culture pressures people to remove it. Social scripts frame female moustaches as problems needing fixing, reinforced by sexism, racism, ableism, and capitalism. Historical claims cast facial hair as masculine, inferior, inhuman, or linked to freakishness, while industries promote constant product use to erase it. Denying access to hair removal may be possible temporarily, but avoidance of cultural pressure is difficult long term. Providing agency can mean discussing choices and offering practical support if the hair bothers a child, rather than insisting on silence or forcing an age limit on comfort.

"Two things separate us from our animal sistren on this front: the cultural imperative to annihilate the fur that covers our flesh, and access to waxing salons. You can certainly deny your daughter the latter for now, but she probably can't avoid the former forever. While some of us inherit more facial hair than others fellow Italian American here, with the hirsute upper lip to prove it! nearly all of us inherit a social script that tells us female facial hair is a problem in need of fixing."

"Sexism positioned moustaches as masculine. (In 1575, Spanish physician Juan Huarte claimed facial hair was a sign of intelligent but disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly women.) Racism positioned them as inferior, even inhuman. Ableism associated the female moustache with circus freaks. Capitalism encouraged its obliteration via perpetual product use. Gradually, these overlapping messages pathologized the norm and normalized deviation."

"One electrolysis studio refers to it as an epidemic a diabolically convenient way for a hair removal company to say universal trait, no? Systems of stratification have refined and reinforced this script over centuries. Sexism positioned moustaches as masculine. (In 1575, Spanish physician Juan Huarte claimed facial hair was a sign of intelligent but disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly women.)"

"You can certainly deny your daughter the latter for now, but she probably can't avoid the former forever. While some of us inherit more facial hair than others fellow Italian American here, with the hirsute upper lip to prove it! nearly all of us inherit a social script that tells us female facial hair is a problem in need of fixing."

Read at www.theguardian.com