Lauren Voelkle CBI

In Wolf Alice, Alice was raised by wolves and did not physically appear to be similar to the rest of the society when she is brought in with the nuns. "When they found her in the wolf's den beside the bullet-riddled corpse of her foster mother, she was no more than a little brown scrap so snarled in her own brown hair they did not, at first, think she was a child but a cub," (120).

I connected this to the issue of body hair in our society.

Chicago Tribune Article

"Some cultures regarded it as uncivilized, since body hair appears on animal bodies," said Sherrow. "The idea of a hairless body for American women developed between 1915 and 1945."

This article gives a brief overview of the history of women shaving their body hair. Greeks and Romans used pumice to remove body hair, while the Egyptians used beeswax and a quicklime substance to remove leg hair. In 1915, Gillette's Milady Decollete, the first razor aimed at shaving women's underarms, was first introduced on the market, which allowed women's fashion to become more revealing with sleeveless shirts and shorter hem-lines. Now, women more than ever will go through any pain in order to remove unwanted body hair. In most hair salons, they offer waxing- pretty much anywhere on the body, with a great cost. If not the salon, there are centers for solely waxing off unwanted body hair.


On the other hand, men are embracing their body hair more than ever. There are beard clubs, competitions, and mustaches became a new cultural fad. The longer the beard, the "manlier" you are. My brother is the co-founder of a beard club in Buffalo that has both men and women followers, young and old, and they have monthly meetings and get togethers in order to talk about beards.

We see Alice experiencing puberty in this story and the changes that accompany it, "the white growths reminded her of nothing so much as the night-sprung puff balls she had found...then, to her astonishment, she found a little diadem of fresh hairs tufting between her thighs," (124). Then, it goes on to say how the nuns did not give her enough information on how to deal with puberty, which leaves her lost and scrambling to be clean like the others.

"In a world of talking beasts and flowers, she would be the bud of flesh in the kind lion's mouth: but how can the bitten apple flesh out its scar again?" (121). This quote refers to how if Alice was born amongst Adam and Eve, she would be the new poster-child of femininity with her animalistic lifestyle. Perhaps women would be more accepting of their body hair. Ultimately, it is your choice whether you want body hair or not, because it naturally belongs to you.