Mummy gives me a spoon
Daddy gives me some lovely soft foamy shaving cream

Proudly Proudly
I remove the hair from my hairless face Just like Daddy
I lock the bathroom door
My shopper's drug mart plastic bag is with me

Secretly Silently
I read the instructions

The sickening chemicals give me away and scar my skin.

"...naming, like a cast of the die, is just one step toward unnaming, a tool to render visible what he has carefully kept invisible..."

— Trinh T. Minh-ha¹Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1989:48

Gasping and laughing, we women are empathetically, defiantly and jokingly offering a friend responses to the men that yelled, "Shave your legs!" at her. Standing around after work, we are mocking and talking about how others see our ('hairy') bodies, and how we see ourselves.

It's not something we are supposed to do, loudly share these stories in the hallway. When we Western(ized) women remove the hair from our bodies, it is a secret ritual, so that we can pretend we never had any. If we don't shave, then it is supposed to be a trivial or political matter, one we are comfortable with.²Wendy Chapkis describes not being able to talk about feeling 'ugly': "As a feminist, I felt I had 'no business' feeling stung by not measuring up. Of couse I knew that all my sisters felt comfortable in their skins—whatever shape, colour, texture, or size they happened to be." (Chapkis 1986:2) We're not supposed to admit feeling (or being made to feel) inadequate about measuring up to the images that we are opposing. Certainly, we are not supposed to talk publicly about such vulgarities, or offend, or threaten others with our vulgar, hairy bodies in the first place.

The powerful norm of hairless (white, blonde, skinny, tall...) female body is not as universal, in the West, or in the world, as the images we see lead us to believe. Yet, I (we) do believe the images. And in believing them, I internalize notions of beauty that mean I see my hairy body as ugly, unwomanly, 'anti-womanly': the antithesis of what is defined as 'woman,' or threatening rejection of it.

The relationship between body hair and sexuality is explicit in representations of both women and men. Explicit, yet complex, contradictory, and unclear. Ads push endless products claiming to enhance the sex appeal of our eyelashes, or the hair on our head. Other ads sell us products to make ourselves smooth and sexy by removing the hair everywhere else on our face and bodies. John Berger comments on a 17th century European painting which traditionally does not depict a woman's body hair—even her genital hair:

"This picture is made to appeal to his sexuality. It has nothing to do with her sexuality. Here and in the European tradition generally, the convention of not painting the hair on a woman's body helps towards the same end. Hair is associated with sexual power, with passion..."

Stuart Hood, in his discussion of war and sexuality, also mentions the 'notable lack of pubic hair' in a pornographic cartoon during WWII.

A woman I interview also begins to talks to me about the link between body hair and (male) sexuality:

"It is interesting, how much it has to do with sexuality—men call you a dyke, or ugly—as if that was the worst insult, that they find you sexually unattractive. It makes you think that it really is about patriarchy."

Although hair is associated with sexual power, a woman with body hair is portrayed as (hetero)sexually undesirable. In order for women to be seen as desirable to men, we have been stripped of our own sexuality. And that European image has become so naturalized that it represents not only female sexuality and beauty, but what is (Western) 'woman'.

In discussions and interviews with women, we begin to realize, or have recognized, that the desire to have a woman hairless is a desire to keep her looking like a girl. Body hair is a 'secondary sex characteristic'; it indicates sexual maturity, it is one of the things that defines us as women, rather than as girls.

I am also realizing that there is an unexplored link between animality and body hair. An acquaintance who shaves her legs asks to see mine. I raise my pant leg and show her a hairy limb. She shakes her head and says, "You're wild, Sarita." Her judgement throws me off, and only later can I reflect on her choice of words: 'wild: savage, undomesticated, passionate, unruly.'

In trying to redefine, reclaim my body, my sexuality, I am trying to oppose those images, those norms. Examining, deconstructing them, learning about their origin, is a beginning. Learning they are not universal helps. A woman of African descent tells me about her visiting grandmother who sees her clean-shaven legs, and exclaims with alarm, "She doesn't have any hair on her legs!" Reassured, she says with disbelief, "You shave your legs??!!" And my mother tells me that in India, the practice only began in the 60s when all the 'modern, Westernized' girls began wearing sleeveless tops as a rebellion against tradition. Yet now my friend's aunt in India tells her it is only 'backward and uneducated' women that don't shave.

I am concerned with the images of these norms and relations, and their visual and symbolic representation. Photographs are not significant because they necessarily create these norms and relations. Photographers, however, are significant because they do symbolise, 'idealise' (Holland et al 1986),³Patricia Holland, Jo Spence and Simon Whatney (eds) Photography/Politics: Two Comedia Publishing Group, London, 1986. powerfully reinforce, and help to naturalize norms and relations. These images also become powerful because they are both used to sell us an image of ourselves and the products that we need to create that image. For example, an article and accompanying photos in a women's magazine advertise bathing suits, and then tell us exactly which before, during and after products we need to shave that 'sensitive' genital area. So, creating alternative photographic images of myself and other women, and talking to these women about their experiences, has become part of my project of opposition.

Yet I have apprehensions, questions about what I am doing. How can any alternative photography avoid reproducing the images it opposes? When I photograph a woman's leg, my leg, I feel I am using my power as photographer to objectify and fragment her body, my body. And in pretending to counter images, am I consciously/unconsciously reproducing the codes and conventions of those images? I cannot deny that I am still defining myself in opposition to, and therefore in relation to, a dominant image, rather than escaping it. Trinh T. Minh-ha points to the way in which we cannot avoid reproducing the colonialism of the colonizer's language:

"I have wondered time and time again about my reading myself as I feel he reads me..."⁴Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1989

But we also need to look beyond an analysis of the 'inherent' qualities of the technology, of its conventions, and look as well at the political and social context of both dominant and oppositional images. That means we must ask who creates and controls the image? What is it used for? Who is it made for? Who is photographed?

For months I have been excited about this photo project, discussing it with other women. And yet, when I first get behind a camera and turn it on my own body, I begin to have serious doubts:

"I am starting to feel uncomfortable with the idea of photographing women, and especially parts of their bodies. Am I just reproducing their objectification by others in the images all around us? There is something about photography, about the technology itself that seems to be perhaps inherently objectifying. And silencing. It can be used out of context, and most often, out of control of the photographed, but in the control of the photographer."⁵Personal notes, October 16, 1992

Holland et al (1986) focus on this issue of power, saying that, "photography constructs and positions sexuality in the likeness ofthe beliefs and interests of the institutions which support it."

So I would like to think the photographs I take (my photographs) are different than dominant images in an important way. I can make the argument this way: Unlike the professional image-maker, keeper and seller, I am a non-white, female, amateur, novice photographer taking pictures of my own community, myself, and my supportive friends. Unlike some 'political' photographers, I am not trying to interpret the social conditions of another community through my eyes. I pay to print these photos out of my limited income, and do not sell them. My intentions are to oppose an oppressive norm by making a political statement about our personal lives, not to make a profit.

But I do profit from these images, personally, academically, maybe professionally. I also keep them, manipulate them, and control if and where they get shown or published. To some extent it feels like a reproduction of the power relations of dominant image-making. Perhaps I can resolve this by taking only self-portraits. Or by conceiving of a truly collective project, as Su Braden advocates in Committing Photography.⁶Su Braden, Committing Photography, Pluto Press, London, 1983.

An oppositional, alternative photography needs to address these issues if it is to truly challenge or subvert the dominant; the power of (hetero)sexist, classist, racist images. But I have also found that even an attempted alternative photography can have several roles in countering dominant images. We must focus not only on product, but on process. As we produce alternative images, the open discussion about our issues of self-representation, as well as our internalized feelings about 'beauty' and 'ugliness', can be as important as the 'finished' work.

Barthes says "...the Photograph's essence is to ratify what it represents... No writing can give me this certainty."⁷Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, The Noonday Press, New York, 1981. I realize that is why I photograph women myself, to affirm our/my reality, to say, "We are real, we exist, our reality is silenced. No one can disprove our presence in these photographs." (I think). It goes further. I am refusing to hide what is supposed to be hidden; I am flaunting it.

In the end, I photograph not to replace the dominant images, nor to influence those who make them. I want my images to be seen by women whose reality is not represented by the dominant images. I want my photographs to be seen by women who have chosen differently, to be seen by me.