Cultural Aspects
Adolescent and adult women in many Western cultures often remove the hair from their legs. Toned, tanned, shaved legs are sometimes perceived as a sign of youthfulness and are often considered attractive in these cultures.
Men generally do not shave their legs in any culture. However, leg-shaving is a generally accepted practice in modeling. It is also fairly common in sports where the hair removal makes the athlete appreciably faster by reducing drag; the most common case of this is competitive swimming. It is also practised in many other sports, such as cycling, in which skin injuries are common: the absence of grown hair makes nicks, scratches and bruises heal faster because of the reduced microbial population on shaved skin.
Legs are often used metaphorically in many cultures to indicate either strength or mobility. The supporting columns of an object may be referred to as legs as well, as in chair legs.
Read more about this topic: Human Leg
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or aspects:
“The personal appropriation of clichés is a condition for the spread of cultural tourism.”
—Serge Daney (19441992)
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalismbut only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)