Hair everywhere, don’t care

To shave or not to shave. Actually, that is not even the question. The question is: can we celebrate female body hair, wherever it is or isn’t?

Let’s skip the fuzz and go straight to the ‘hair-raising’ facts: the average human body boasts some 5 million hair follicles, and most of them are there for a very good reason. Pubic hair, for example, has been getting a bad rep for being ‘unhygienic’ while the opposite is true! Your bush actually prevents bacteria from entering your vagina and provides a cushion against harmful friction. It also helps spread pheromones; the chemicals that make us irresistible to our partners. In other words, you shave down there, you may miss out on a lot of great sex.

Body hair has been censured and policed for centuries, with Roman poet Ovid setting the tone in 2 B.C. by urging women to groom so “that no rude goat find his way beneath your arms and that your legs be not rough with bristling hair.” From Botticelli‘s smooth Venus – no wonder she had a razor named after her! – to the bald pubes of Renoir’s bathing beauties, one thing becomes clear when you check Western Culture’s iconic art: our feminine beauty standard is smooth and hairless.

Growing up, I found that concept baffling: some hair – the hair on our heads, for example – is acceptable, and some of it is not? Says who? As the women around me shaved, plucked and waxed, I proudly watched my hair grow and give ‘character’ to my body. Sure, I had a feminist motivation: if guys don’t shave, why should I? But mostly, I just loved the look, from Friday Kahlo’s eyebrows to my beautiful, natural armpits. The times that I did shave everything off, I felt like a Barbie doll, robbed off my expression. A few years later, when Carrie Bradshaw unwittingly got a Brazilian on ‘Sex and the City’, I could really relate to her reaction: “I got mugged! She took everything I got!”

In the past 20 years, there have been some brave women publicly breaking hair taboos. Remember the world gasping at Julia Robert‘s hairy pits during the Notting Hill premiere in 1999 or Lady Gaga performing in 2011 with dyed green armpit hair? But it was the rise of social media that really gave momentum to the body-hair revolution. A 2018 Instagram post by Rihanna flaunting her leg hair received 3.8 million likes and comments such as ‘If Rihanna can have leg hair, bitch so can I!’ And when Madonna unapologetically showed off her armpit hair using the caption ‘Long hair… don’t care!’, celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Lena Dunham and Gigi Hadid followed suit. Viral hashtags like #bodyhairdontcare and #myhairmychoice cemented the deal: the body-hair positivity movement was here to stay.

Letting our body hair grow can be a feminist statement, like women burning their bras during the 1960s. Yet there is one big difference: fourth-wave feminism is about the freedom to choose and define yourself for yourself. You can shave, but you don’t have to. Do you like some parts of your body hairy? Cool! You don’t? Also cool! You do you. To me, body hair is natural; not liking body hair is cultural. Let’s shake off cultural conditioning and stop feeling ashamed. Who knows, as a result, we might even stop shaming other women for their hair choices, whether they are plucking, waxing, lasering, keeping their hair natural or dying it neon pink. Women sticking together; how’s that for a bad-ass feminist statement?