Notes
1The assignment specifically asked them to reflect about the following four sets of questions: (1) What did you feel like emotionally when adopting the “non-masculine” norm of shaving? What was this experience like for you?; (2) In what way (if at all) did this affect your sexuality, health, and/or your feelings about your own body? Did anything change behaviorally? What about internally?; (3) What kind of external feedback, if any, did you receive about this? How did others respond? What did that feel like?; (4) How has this experience allowed you to reflect upon the social construction of bodily norms, particularly as they relate to sexuality?
2I do not specify the racial backgrounds, ages, and sexual identities of participants (unless absolutely necessary for the analysis) so that I can protect their anonymity, as the group was relatively small and these features could easily identify them to their classmates from that semester.
3During one class, a male student told other students that he had tried Nair and had over-applied it to his body which resulted in negative side effects like a burning rash. As a low point of this experiment, this student's use of a self-identified “female” approach to body hair removal was met with intense laughter and a few homophobic reactions from nearby men.
4Because of the small sample size and small number of men of color (only 4), I chose not to analyze their responses by race or class in order to focus instead on the more salient gender and sexual identity issues discussed by all eight men.
5See Fahs Forthcoming and Fahs and Delgado 13, for a more thorough discussion of women in the body hair experiment conforming to classroom pressures.