Belly Dancers - Welcome!
When we started this site, very few sites were there on the net advocating natural armpits. The only exception was the commercial ATK site which promoted heairy armpits and natural girls some time in the late 90s and Chloe Vevrie's pictures which appeared through Score Magazine and Chloesworld a little earlier.
Now it is heartening to see that in 2007, natural girls and hairy armpits are accepted much more on the net. Many sites have appeared apprceiating this directly and indirectly. The most important is the indirect acceptance of hairy armpits as an object of beauty and eroticism. While this has been the case always secretly, in public there has been open attempts to reject armpits, especially by fashion industry and the so-called champions of international models and beuaty. There has always been big noise when any celebrity dared to bare her armpits with a healty tuft of hair. This happened for Paula Cole, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, Michelle Rodriguez and many more.
Recently I came across a site which is mainly devoted to bellydancers and related contents. The site has a fantastic colelction photographs from the bellydancers perforamnces. Though there had been many bellydancer sites, the amount of large pictures available in public domain was always very limited. Wha is amazing is the fact in many pictures, the dancers have a profound growth of armpits hair... so naturally displayed wiithout any fuss. Well done.
 The above is a screen shot of the site's one of many photoshots! Here is another picture (click for a bigger shot)
|
More to follow:
The following is from discussion forum on why the Western Models and so skinny and devoid of any beauty!
I'd like to flip the point on its head for a moment and
ask the people in this group, if they can help explain
why the super-skinny look that the International fashion
industry promotes has become so dominant & popular.
I have two criticisms of the super-skinny look, when
promoted as an ideal.
First, from the point of view of health, it doesn't seem
to make sense to promote such an extremely thin and
anorexic looking body-type, in the same way that it
wouldn't make any sense to promote an obese body type. It
simply isn't healthy to promote either extreme as an
ideal.
Yet fashion magazines and fashions shows continuously
bombard us with images of female models so skinny, that
often their arms as thin as narrow tubes and their bones
show through, all along their body.
If fitness alone was the criterea for being thin, then
take a look at some of the fittest women: female
atheletes, such as tennis players. I can think of very
few who are extremely skinny. Apart from usually being a
bit muscular, most of them seem to have somewhat fuller
body types.
Second, and I suppose this point is very subjective, I
find very little appealing in the super-skinny look.
Why exactly is a body type, where a person's arms are as
thin as small tubes, where the rib cage and hip bones
show through, considered so attractive? What's wrong with
healthy looking arms and an extra bit of soft curvature
around the hips and stomach? Yet even this amount of
healthly weight is considered by some men and women to be
"fat".
And yes, I am generalizing here. While not everyone
actually fits the ideal that the Western/International
fashion industry propogates, I think the super-skinny
beauty ideal has a great deal of influence on the minds
of women (& men), especially young teenage women who
often become near anorexic in pursuit of this look.
While I think there are still beauty cultures that have a
somewhat different conception of weight and beauty, such
as India's, I think they are all susceptible to the World
fashion industry's beauty mono-culture.
As you pointed out Bucaneer, even Western beauty cultures
of the past have appreciated fuller figures. So why the
change?
So my questions are: Can anyone explain why the super
skinny look is considered so appeailing? Why has it
become so popular? and/ or How was it able to replace
(and continues to influence)other ideas of what it means
to be beautiful.
P.S: This is not an attack of people who are skinny; only
a critical discussion of why one ideal of beauty is so
pre-dominantly promoted above others.
--- Buccaneer Netter <buccaneer_netter@y...
The ideal of feminine beauty in India, especially in the
South, has never been one of the flatboard type
midsections being flaunted by the catwalk Barbies these
days.
The Indian woman has been, through the ages, always proud
to flaunt (however secret) her lush figure, full belly
and swelling posteriors included, thank you, and the
Indian male has never been known to shirk back from
unadulterated adulation of the female full figure.
Look at our sculptures in Kajuraho and the countless
female deities that adorn our temples. A marked
protruberance of the female midsection isinescapable.
It was not that long ago in the West that a full bellied
female was adored as being curvaceous rather than being
scorned for possessing excessive body fat. One needs just
to look at Ruben's paintings to appreciate the female
ideal at that time.
Even the Victorians, prudish puritans they might have
been, revelled in the allure of the healthy curve of a
woman's full tummy. Numerous erotic texts from that
period (almost always written by an
"anonymous"!) provide testimony to the
Victorian penchant for womanly paunches.
I have several texts worth mentioning. One that
immediately comes to my mind is the all time classic
"The Man with the Maid - Part 1" Who could
forget Lady Betty and the description of her voluptous
curves!
Well, to continue, many of the South Indian and some of
the North Indian beautiess have healthy midsections.