I was relieved when I clicked through and realized it was dyed hair and not a tattoo.
I Must Be Getting Old
Seriously, man. I didn't even recognize you.
I look forward to the extension of this trend to weaves and dreadlocks.
My question - is that some kind of spray-on dye or did she actually bleach and then dye,, which would be a LOT of effort for a short term effect? (Her hair and eyebrows look dyed, but she doesn't look like she's actually blond, and I assume based on dying my hair [head hair - minds out of the gutter, people] that she couldn't get that clear purple shade without bleaching first.) A certain amount of inbuilt hilarity when you'd get roots showing, I guess.
I am excited to see that the same slightly violet reds which I dyed my hair in college seem to be coming back into style. Now I am too old and they would only make me look raddled, but they were fun at the time.
she doesn't look like she's actually blond
...and you're not actually a gentle(wo)man.
Is is wrong that I'm kind of annoyed by this insofar as it's presented as a justification for not shaving your underarms? "As a feminist, you don't have to shave, it's fine if you do this other laboriously stupid thing instead."
I mean, it's mildly amusing, but I really doubt anyone's dyeing their underarm hair because they actually particularly like the look.
Why wouldn't they like the look? I mean, compared to other things people do because they like the look, this seems pretty mild.
You really don't get a lot of chances to show off your pits. I wear a lot of sleeveless stuff in the summer, and I'm a very slack shaver, and I never have a moment's concern about, say, two weeks of visible stubble because in the average day, if you're not a shelf-restocker, you spend maybe thirty or forty seconds with your arms far enough over your head to display your armpit hair.
11: But the kids today do all kinds of laborious beauty stuff - nail art, that ombre hair, etc. Or at least, the kids who are into that sort of thing do. In fact, bleaching your armpit hair at least has the advantage of being relatively permanent - you don't need to reapply it every day like make-up. And quite cheap - back when I was dying my hair regularly, I'd just get a giant bucket of bleach powder and a giant bottle of developer (I'll probably get some horrible lung disease from years of inhaling bleach powder) and then a couple of tubs of Manic Panic and I'd be set for quite a lot of hair dying.
I do envy the young folks these days - there's so much better hair dye available and so many more colors. I've been toying with the idea of dying a teeny tiny streak in mine, since the previous Most Extreme Dresser at work has left. (When I was first hired here, she'd come to work every day with glitter heavily smeared all over her face - and it was the colorful "going out dancing" body glitter, too, not some kind of beigey gold stuff. It was one of the more extreme things I've seen on a real person and gave me some insight into how shocking some of the first punk styles much have been when they were new.)
You're all upper middle class professionals - how objectionable would it be for a secretary to have, say, a little streak of blue in their hair? Let's just assume that I am not going to rise in the ranks but will remain basically secretarial forever, so I don't need to show that I am Very Serious About My Career. Also, I do some specialized stuff and get cut a little slack for that reason.
If you never shaved, long hair would show, but not really enough of it to get the impact of a pop of color like you see in the photo. It only works if you're posing. So, bleach and color every two weeks for a body part that's mostly invisible? That's up there with anus bleaching.
You really don't get a lot of chances to show off your pits.
Sit in meetings and do that thing where you put your hands behind your head and lean back in the chair. Ride transit as a straphanger. Work in a frequently robbed convenience store or bank.
I'm not about to google, but anus bleaching seems dangerous.
The gym leads to a lot of pit visibility even one is not wearing sleeveless clothes since one's sleeves shift around a lot while lifting weights, etc.
Also I am given to understand that the young people have a great deal of sex nowadays; armpits are frequently visible during sex.
6: and steampunky handlebars.
I'm sure if I actually saw someone whose handlebar mustache tips were dyed a different color from the rest, I would think "way to try hard, try-hard", but in the abstract this sounds cool.
how objectionable would it be for a secretary to have, say, a little streak of blue in their hair?
Probably depends on a lot on your office, says the guy wearing stained jeans to work for the second day in a row.
17: It's a thing. Dyeing can't be far behind.
But one can't dye one's anus, can one? It would have to be a tattoo.
I'd guess if you can bleach it you can dye it. This is going to require experimental investigation. I'll start the IRB paperwork.
I Must Be Getting Old
Say more, ogged. As you once wisely asked, "Who, really, wants edited Ogged?"
14: It's not that people don't do laborious stuff in the service of fashion, but the whole point of not shaving was to reject that kind of tedious beauty standard, so replacing it with a bleach-and-dye process does undermine that rationale.
Anyhow, the blue streak? Depends on the office. Here, it might be looked at askance by the staff were it on another staff person who are generally wholesome local Mormons, but not if it were on faculty, as we're all unwholesome out of state liberals. The faculty wouldn't care either way.
Could wine turn my anus purple the way it does my tooth enamel?
A friend of mine dyed her pit hair (and, or so I heard, pubes) green for prom. Decades ago!
I've seen that South Park episode, apo.
I once saw an elaborate tattoo of a spider (I think?) centered on someone's anus, but guess what, I'm not going to look for it again at work.
The person on whose anus it was centered was the person who had the tattoo. It wasn't one person's tattoo centered on another person's anus.
Is that another way of saying it's earning its pay today, ogged?
30: Oho Mr. "I wear stained jeans" the Man has his claws in you after all.
Househusbands earn their pay every day.
30 should really say "saw a picture of." Or maybe the coworker you saw it on is in an important meeting?
36: I just assumed he forgot where he uploaded the picture to.
25: But the whole expectation of shaving - and hence the mandatory work - is based on the idea that the female body is basically disgusting, especially where it is hairy. So basically, the only possibility for the body, in this discourse, is either to be compliant or to be "natural"/rebellious. Not shaving isn't saving labor for the sake of saving labor (I mean, it is for me, but I am so lazy and so very, very queer that I can't even remember the last time I bothered shaving legs or armpits); not shaving is about not having to comply. Dying one's armpit hair pink is to say that one can do something amusing and gratuitous with one's body rather than just comply/refuse.
I would argue that this is different from the various replace-one-form-of-compliance-with-another aspects of performing gender - the "no makeup" look, for instance, or going from being required to cover or minimize a body part to being required to maintain it correctly for display. (Like all that"hey fat ladies, now you can wear body-revealing clothes, but you'd better make sure that you look hourglassy and not just fat in them - see how liberating!!)
Dying one's armpits is - at least at this cultural moment; who knows what the utopian future will bring? - so bizarre and gratuitous that it really isn't replacing one form of compliance with another.
There's a Sex and the City episode about dyed pubes.
People do stuff because it's fun and they like the way it looks. I am happy to assume precisely no one is doing this because "I feel so bad about not shaving my pits that I will dye them."
Also, I just pulled a beetle out of my bra. But I didn't put it there on purpose. (Aughghghh. Two beetles! There was a second beetle!)
(40 was a response to realizing how compulsively I describe things as basically-this. Like, twice in two sentences. Not as bad as beetles in the undergarments, but not particularly euphonious either.)
30 should really say "saw a picture of."
I believe that we can see things in virtue of seeing pictures of them but I acknowledge that your formula might be more precise.
Wait how many beetles are in your undergarments? More than two in two days?
There's probably a moderately funny carpet/drapes joke to be made here, but I'll let someone else do it, because I'm too old busy shaving my pubes lazy.
"We've traced the beetles. They're coming from inside the undergarments. A squad car's coming over there right now."
13: You need to walk on Melrose and Fairfax Aves out here. There's lots of casual pit exposure and also some posing going on. (And now that I think of it, "acceptable" women's postures have loosened up considerably over my lifetime.)
I gotta say I find the dyed pits adorable.
If she worked at it, she could flash them all kinds of ways.
They'd be really fun when she went dancing, for instance.
I too agree with neb re: sexiness of this.
Also, like several others said, it's totally possible to find lots of opportunities to show off one's armpits if one is so inclined. Most people just don't do so because they aren't.
I guess this could be sexy in context, but on my screen it just looks like she has smudges under her arms, possibly the result of an accident involving a mimeograph machine.
I admit that the sexiness of this particular picture is greatly aided by the fact that she's super-cute to start with.
possibly the result of an accident involving a mimeograph machine
Now I want to smell them.
We're learning so much about each other in this thread.
I'd certainly take her side in a fight with a mimeograph machine, if you catch my drift.
Also, there's a cucumber joke in here somewhere.
Maybe I'll have a cucumber for breakfast.
I had no idea that the ditto machine is also called a spirit duplicator. This has been an exciting Friday night.
I think you mean <p style="color:#800080">fake accent</p>.