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"As part of her classes on women and gender studies at Arizona State University, associate professor Breanne Fahs offers a novel way of helping her students prop up their grades. Pop quizzes are so pass\u00E9, after all. Her female students can score extra credit if they agree, for the ten-week-long course, to stop shaving their armpits \u2014 and to keep a journal documenting their experiences. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no better way to learn about societal norms than to violate them and see how people react, Fahs told ASU News (via ThinkProgress). Her students have described the experience as &amp;quot;life-changing.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It definitely [makes you] realize that if you&amp;#039;re not strictly adhering to socially prescribed gender roles, your body becomes a site for contestation and public opinion,&amp;quot; said one Stephanie Robinson, who added that, as part of her commitment to the project, she even got married with pit hair. (Her mother, Robinson added, was &amp;quot;distraught.&amp;quot;) In a similar vein, another student said a male friend described her pit hair as &amp;quot;the sludge in the bottom of the garbage can,&amp;quot; before ranting about how it represented an affront on a man&amp;#039;s authority. In the interests of fairness and equality, Fahs&amp;#039; male students aren&amp;#039;t left out, though their extra credit comes from shaving hair, rather than let it grow out. Specifically, guys in her class must shave their body hair completely from the neck down, and keep it bare for the duration. This helps make &amp;quot;the process labor-intensive,&amp;quot; Fahs explains, &amp;quot;and gives men some insight into what women who shave go through.&amp;quot; In a quintessentially macho take on the assignment, she added that one student performed his close shaves with a buck knife. Bold is the guy who takes a buck knife to his ball sack, that&amp;#039;s for sure. RELATED: Madonna And Her Armpit Hair Took A Selfie Together Follow Alex on  Twitter. Photo credit: Mark Cuthbert / Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/college/news/a28501/college-is-the-pits/>