Body hair. We all have it, and yet there is still a massive amount of negative energy being focussed towards the women who decide to keep theirs. With Januhairy bringing it all into the forefront this month, the conversation of women's body hair is something that needs to be talked about.
As a woman with some Cypriot heritage, despite being so pale I'm practically reflective, means my body hair is pretty dark and intense. I started waxing my underarms at the age of 11 as I had started to grow some finer hairs there and asked my mum about getting rid of them. She said that if I really wanted to get rid of the hair, I could come with her to have them waxed. And so begins the journey of 7 years of consistent waxing. Due to the nature of waxing, you have to let your hair grow out, which as a young girl going through secondary school was not ideal. I got called "Cave Girl" when someone spotted the hair under my arms, remarking that it was disgusting. (Excuse me male with identical body hair, if mine was disgusting, THEN WHAT ABOUT YOURS?) I would have people commenting on how hairy my arms were, even though they were blonde, placing their arms next to mine and laughing to their mates: "Oh my god. You're hairier than me!"
I shaved my arms, my legs, my knuckles, my snail trail, plucked my eyebrows way more than I should've (lets take a collective moment to grieve for our year 8 eyebrows)
and made sure that no one could ever see my underarms. I was 15 at this point. Then came the whispers about ~PuBiC hAiR~.
Ooooh boy that was a whole new demon that I didn't know how to tackle. I remember hearing whispers of one girl who had pubic hair, and how it was "so gross. Why doesn't she shave??" as if that was the accepted norm at 15. This then led me to talk to some of my friends about it. Half were just as confused as me, the other half couldn't believe I hadn't started shaving already. Now I wish I could grab my younger self and tell her that the people who expected every girl to be hairless probably watched way too much porn and I should ignore it all and do my own thang.
At 21, I'm now pretty much completely comfortable with my body hair. I stopped shaving my arms and managed to nurse my eyebrows back from the dead, and following laser hair removal on my underarms I rarely think about my body hair. At the end of the day, it's up to that person to do what they please with their body hair and if someone wants to comment on my body hair I will simply explain that what I do is my business, and if they feel the need to comment about how female body hair is unhygienic and disgusting I would like to know why they don't think male body hair is as well.
Then I'd like to see them go through a Brazilian wax.
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