Most women who live with facial hair don’t refer to the Ferriman-Gallwey scale before deciding they have a problem. Illustration: Mona Chalabi Photograph: Mona Chalabi The Ferriman-Gallwey scale for the measure of hirsutism The total score is then added up – less than eight is considered normal, a score of eight to 15 indicates mild hirsutism and a score greater than 15 moderate or severe hirsutism. It has since been simplified, scoring just nine body areas (upper lip, chin, chest, upper stomach, lower stomach, upper arms, upper legs, upper back and lower back). The men looked at 11 body areas on women, rating the hair from zero (no hairs) to four (extensive hairs). More specifically, they were interested in terminal hairs (ones that are coarser, darker and at least 0.5cm/0.2 inches in length) rather than the fine vellus hairs. In 1961, an endocrinologist named Dr David Ferriman and a graduate student published a study on the “clinical assessment of body hair growth in women”. If you’re unsure whether your hair growth qualifies as “excessive” for a woman, there’s a measurement tool that some men have developed for you. But plenty more women who don’t come close to that benchmark of “excessive” still feel deeply uncomfortable about their body hair. Because these little whiskers represent the most basic rules of the patriarchy – to ignore them is to jeopardize your reputation, even your dignity.Ībout one in 14 women have hirsutism, a condition where “excessive” hair appears in a male pattern on women’s bodies. The removal of facial hair is just as paradoxical – the pressure to do it is recognized by many women as a stupid social norm and yet they strictly follow it. Merran Toerien, who wrote her PhD on the removal of female body hair, explained “biologically the boundary lines on body hair between masculinity and femininity are much more blurred than we make them seem”. It’s something that’s common yet considered abnormal, natural for one gender and freakish for another.
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What can be dismissed as trivial is a source of deep anxiety for many women, but that’s what female facial hair is a series of contradictions.