2008 Woodie Awards
Lip hair and democracy
Global politics, seen through the lens of peach fuzz
Eryk Salvaggio
Issue date: 3/24/08 Section: News
Rebecca Herzig studies unwanted facial hair, particularly its removal, a process that for many women reads like the warfare from a science fiction novel: a never-ending battle waged by chemicals, bolts of electricity and laser beams.
Tragically, this banal ritual has real victims. Almost 70,000 Africans are falling victim to the mounting pressures of western women, Herzig explained, leading to her central question: When is suffering endured, and when is it an outrage?
The source of this cold-cream war is a drug, marketed in the U.S. as Vaniqa. Vaniqa has the same active ingredient, Eflornithine, used in the treatment of trypanosomiasis, or Sleeping Sickness, a disease spread in Africa by insects. The disease affects the brain, causing comas and, eventually, death.
Herzig said the drug proved useful: within hours patients who had been in comas woke up and could return to their normal lives. Nevertheless, economic forces eventually caused the manufacturer of the drug, Bristol Myers Squibb, to stop producing it.
That all changed when the FDA approved Vaniqa, which took advantage of a side effect of Eflornithine: the retardation of hair follicles. The chemical was branded with the name Ornidyl, and women who had relied on chemicals or electrolysis had another option in the treatment of their condition.
The resulting strain led to a strange paradox of market forces and what Herzig called "biopolitics." Demand for the face cream was so strong that competition for the resource put Africans in the developing world at a severe disadvantage to the western women who make beauty products a billion-dollar industry.
Herzig spoke with empathy about the almost global concern over unwanted hair, explaining a democratic history with some surprising overtures to the feminine virtues of a hairless top lip.
Consider Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, author of the US Constitution and an expert on unwanted feminine facial hair. In his own writings, Herzig explained, Jefferson pointed to the hairlessness of Native Americans - who plucked their hair long before European influence - as evidence of their social restraint against the bestial body hair, proving they could be incorporated into the democratic process. The same evidence, to Jefferson, made Native American slavery an outrage.
Tragically, this banal ritual has real victims. Almost 70,000 Africans are falling victim to the mounting pressures of western women, Herzig explained, leading to her central question: When is suffering endured, and when is it an outrage?
The source of this cold-cream war is a drug, marketed in the U.S. as Vaniqa. Vaniqa has the same active ingredient, Eflornithine, used in the treatment of trypanosomiasis, or Sleeping Sickness, a disease spread in Africa by insects. The disease affects the brain, causing comas and, eventually, death.
Herzig said the drug proved useful: within hours patients who had been in comas woke up and could return to their normal lives. Nevertheless, economic forces eventually caused the manufacturer of the drug, Bristol Myers Squibb, to stop producing it.
That all changed when the FDA approved Vaniqa, which took advantage of a side effect of Eflornithine: the retardation of hair follicles. The chemical was branded with the name Ornidyl, and women who had relied on chemicals or electrolysis had another option in the treatment of their condition.
The resulting strain led to a strange paradox of market forces and what Herzig called "biopolitics." Demand for the face cream was so strong that competition for the resource put Africans in the developing world at a severe disadvantage to the western women who make beauty products a billion-dollar industry.
Herzig spoke with empathy about the almost global concern over unwanted hair, explaining a democratic history with some surprising overtures to the feminine virtues of a hairless top lip.
Consider Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, author of the US Constitution and an expert on unwanted feminine facial hair. In his own writings, Herzig explained, Jefferson pointed to the hairlessness of Native Americans - who plucked their hair long before European influence - as evidence of their social restraint against the bestial body hair, proving they could be incorporated into the democratic process. The same evidence, to Jefferson, made Native American slavery an outrage.
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