#hate the capitol so much
I’ve been in the Remake Center for more than three hours and I still haven’t met my stylist. Apparently he has no interest in seeing me until Venia and the other members of my prep team have addressed some obvious problems…primarily, ridding my body of hair. My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of my eyebrows have been stripped of the stuff… I don’t like it. My skin feels sore and tingling and intensely vulnerable.
I stand there, completely naked as the three circle me…
I look at the cold white walls and floor and resist the impulse to retrieve my robe. But this Cinna, my stylist, will surely make me remove it at once. […]
He walks around my naked body, not touching me, but taking in every inch of it with his eyes. I resist the urge to cross my arms over my chest.
~ Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Ch 5
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(TW: Sexual abuse, sort of?)
One of the most disturbing parts of this book for me is the waxing sequence, and not simply for general cringe factor. Reading between the lines, it appears that Katniss endures not only face and body waxing but pubic hair removal as well - which I would consider somewhere between sexual abuse and sexual assault.
This appears to be the “kickoff” of her Remake, so is this the Capitol’s neat way of “breaking” the newly arrived, acutely vulnerable tributes - especially the female ones? Violating their private places (not in an outright sexual fashion, but we’re talking about non-consensual touch and inflicting pain in intimate areas) and then leaving them naked for dispassionate examination?
If not - if said waxing is simply intended as an “extreme makeover” (never mind nothing is ever that simple or innocent with a Capitol that cruelly pimps out its victors) - what possible reason could they have for waxing the pubic hair of girls aged 12-18? Is it that any sort of body hair is so utterly alien to the Capitol population that the tributes don’t look human until it’s gone?
In Ch 19, Katniss remarks that Naked bodies are no big deal in the arena, which further gives one pause. Unless the audience is watching the tributes’ primitive ablutions, is sexual activity (consensual or otherwise) commonplace in the Games?
In which case, is waxing the girls compliance with a Capitol fetish for hairless females? (i.e., it would be revolting to watch an intimate situation unfold where the girl has pubic hair) Or is it a desire to make even the older girls look prepubescent - like the children that they still are in so many ways?
Sorry if I’ve taken this down too dark a path. IHATE -SO MUCH!!! - that they do this to Katniss here (and again at the start of the Victory Tour), but it’s equally disturbing that they do it to all the girl tributes. And even moreso for this to come right after Haymitch’s warning: “You’re not going to like what they do to you. But no matter what it is, don’t resist.”
