Pixie Lott has hairy armpits?! Oh noes

So I arrived back from Italy to find THIS lovely article from the Daily Mail. Apparently Pixie Lott went to the premiere of the Dark Knight Rises and didn't shave her armpits for the occasion and the DM is now up in arms. Of course if this had been a man on the red carpet sporting a little stubble it wouldn't have been a problem, but A WOMAN WITH ARMPIT HAIR? Clearly calls for a whole article on the topic.

I would like to quote some bits of the article:

'she appeared to have forgotten one very important part of her grooming routine'

'Pixie drew attention to her faux pas by putting her hand on her waist'

Source: Daily Mail

'perhaps pixie was taking some styling tips from Julia Roberts'

And my favourite...'HER UNSHAVEN ARMPITS WERE CLEAR TO SEE!!!'

Okay the quote wasn't in capitals and bereft of exclamation marks but that's how I like to imagine the voice of the DM writer who wrote the article. While researching this post I also found out about the Metro's take on Pixie's scandalous pits HERE. This one is actually more problematic in that the author (who is female by the way) describes her stubble as being 'oodles of armpit hair' and more worryingly 'really not acceptable'. She charmingly ends the article with:

'It just goes to show you can have all of the money in the world but you can’t buy class.'

I have stubble too now I'm really not acceptable and I have no class  :(

Bloody charming. Clearly you don't need two brain cells to rub together to be a Metro writer, just a strong subconsciously integrated belief in society's gender roles for your own sex. I think it's fair enough if people don't find body hair (on either gender) attractive, it is your own personal taste and may or may not be influence by society and your upbringing. 

But when body hair (usually on women) is labelled as disgusting, gross,wrong,unacceptable - you have a serious problem. Labelling something entirely natural as such is harmful for self esteem (I wonder if the Metro and DM writers thought how Pixie would feel when she read the articles?), and it's simply sexism - it's okay for men to have hairy armpits, but disgusting for a woman to. 

What I hope will come from this positively is that if the pictures of Pixie are seen out of a negative context they may begin to normalise unshaven armpits on women, which in turn might start to stamp out this sexist attitude to body hair which both men and women seem to have. xx