Dear Angel Cake,

I shave my legs if I’m planning to wear a skirt. In contrast, my girlfriend is a depilation queen. She regularly removes the hair from her legs, crotch, face, arms, and even her back, meaning that getting ready to go out can take her up to two hours. What is this about, and is she judging me for not doing the same?

Fluffy

Dear Fluffy,

This could be about barbie dolls, or Hollywood, or internet porn, but it’s really about one woman’s quest for perfection in a relentlessly untidy world. It’s true that without continual attention roads get potholes and children get bad manners, musicians get rusty and legs become hirsute, but luckily civilisation enables us to rise above the force of entropy and get shit done. As human beings, our large brains and opposable thumbs enable us to up tools and build on the scale of the Taj Mahal, or create art with the complexity of a symphony, and why shouldn’t your girlfriend decide that her tool will be a Bic razor and her achievement, an ever-smooth physical form?

I don’t need to tell you about the cultural obsession with a certain type of feminine beauty that keeps some, perhaps most, women in constant, dreary, painful pursuit of body-based goals. It’s so locked into social expectations, and any form of the media that isn’t radio, that even queer women, with our proud history of unshaven armpits, and our relative understanding of non-hegemonic beauty, can find it difficult not to be sucked into a black hole of eyebrow plucking, hair relaxer, and glitter designed for toes.

I haven’t read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf since I was a rabble-rousing teenager at a Catholic boarding school, but my impression at the time was that women were the victims of some sort of capitalist conspiracy, endeavoring to ensure that we spent all our spare time and money on becoming physically lovely while the boys were busy getting promoted and having fun. Basically, it’s not just your girlfriend, though two hours to get ready for a night out sounds depressingly excessive. Maybe she could listen to the radio or something.

To come to the second part of your question, it seems unlikely that you need to get out your epilator for the good of the relationship. When it comes to satisfying her aesthetic sensibilities, it doesn’t sound like your girlfriend is looking far beyond her bathroom mirror. Your time would be better spent either persuading her you don’t mind a bit of armpit fuzz or buying her a pair of black tights.

ANGEL CAKE

Have you got a question you’d like answered by some lesbian over the internet?  SURE YOU DO.  Holla : contact@themostcake.co.uk.