I've got all the hair, I've got all the hair
I can’t remember how old I was when I started removing hair from my body. At first with razors, then with a slow, painful epilator that was so loud I could only use it when there was no one else (i.e. parents) in the house, occasional chemical hair removal creams and even-more-occasional visits to waxing salons.
First came the legs. We (by which I mean, girls/women) weren’t supposed to have hair there, according to the Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging books we all lapped up age 11ish. It was only the shins that mattered, where the darkest hairs were, but this was a subject of much debate. Many of my friends shaved their calves as well, some shaved the whole leg and others took it a step further and shaved their arms. Even my mum—my hippy, antiestablishment mum—would get a bucket of water and sit in the garden shaving her legs every summer.
Monobrows were equally a no-go (where were those Frida Kahlo portraits when I needed them?) and everyone had a pair of tweezers to avoid this fate—that is, if they weren’t the kind of teenagers who went to salons to get their brows threaded (I grew up in Bath, go figure). My grandma had and still has no eyebrows, but draws them on every morning with a pencil.
As for bushes, they seem to swing in and out of fashion every decade or so. My teenage years happened to be the decade of being bare-down-there. At least, that’s what my teenage boyfriend requested. At first I said I’d only shave mine if he shaved his, which he wouldn’t so that was the end of it. But I still wanted him to want me, so I shaved fully for his birthday. It got all bristly after a day and wasn’t comfortable for anyone. In the end, I met him halfway, and epilated the slightly-less-sensitive skin around my crotch but not the inner parts. I did this for so many years and got so many ingrowing hairs, that now only a few wispy bits grow there. I may never get my bush back. Cue sad music.
In my early twenties, I epilated my legs, armpits and crotch area a couple of days prior to every date, party, festival or anything else where I might end up in male company, naked. It had to be a couple of days before so that all the red, rashy bits had enough time to calm down. If I wasn’t so well-prepared, I’d frequently not have sex with people I wanted to have sex with because my crotch was hairy, bristly or rashy. Similarly, I’d sometimes keep jumpers and/or trousers on in the heat, so as not to reveal the state of my armpits and/or legs. This wasn’t just in my head and it definitely wasn’t just me doing it. At a festival in Sweden, I had pubes and I had sex with a man who asked me what they were. It turned out he’d never seen pubes on a woman before; he thought I was the weird one.
At some point, I’m not quite sure when, it occurred to me how ridiculous all this was and how much time, money and shitty skin issues it was costing me. I carried on doing it anyway. At some point much later, I stopped.
I stopped a lot of other things too. Wearing bras, make-up, difficult-to-eat-in dresses, difficult-to-walk-in shoes. Basically, anything appearance-y that I hated doing but was doing anyway, either to attract men or just to pass as normal in society.
I attribute much of this initial bravery (to stop doing these things) to my dating dry spell. Although my dating dry spell could also be attributed to my not going on dates because I was hairy or because couldn’t be bothered to put a bra on. When I eventually did go on a date, braless and with my armpit hair poking out, the man I met that day happened to be one who thought that armpit hair and lack of bra made me more approachable, and he therefore felt more relaxed in my company, he told me several months later. Perhaps what he could really sniff was that I was being truthful to myself, rather to some imagined idea of what I thought men wanted. And perhaps none of the men I went on dates with before gave a shit whether I was hairy or bra-y anyway. Either way, I live with him now. I also wrote a cheesy, motivational Instagram caption about it for @debeharedekvindersklub (in Danish).
As positive as this all sounds, I also attribute my current hair-bravery to being in a relationship with someone who loves me despite, perhaps even because of, my hairiness. Now (technically, a year ago when it was still possible) I dance away in the club with my hairy armpits in the air and my leg hair swishing around, genuinely carefree. I’m not sure if I’d have the confidence to do so if I was in the same nightclub, single and trying to pull, without the reassurance of a person at home who loves me no matter how crazy I look. More likely my insecurities would get the better of me and I’d lapse and shave it all off again whenever I felt as if I was for some reason repelling potential lovers.
Those potential lovers would probably be far more repelled by my insecurity and my try-hard attempts to entice them than by my body hair or floppy boobs, but knowing that and acting on it are two different things. It’s not easy to ooze confidence when inside you feel insecure and different from everyone else around you.
Anis al-Doleh (pictured above) was once considered the most desirable woman in the world. Her legs were hairy too. Just saying.
It is easier to stop removing body hair than it is to start wearing that hair out in public. I spent my first hairy-legged summer wearing trousers and long dresses, which didn’t feel particularly liberating either. When I was cycling, I’d roll one trouser leg up so it wouldn’t get chain oil on it and I thought everyone was looking at me, staring incredulously at the hairs on my leg. Not only the hairs, but the scars and marks from years of epilating, mixed with the hairs. I imagined them wondering what strange disease I had. Initially, this is how I felt every time I dared to bare my body hair in public.
In Denmark, being a hairy woman isn’t such a big deal (which might also have something to do with most of the population being blonde) but when I’m in other less-hairy countries, walking around in my short summer dress flaunting my hairy legs and my free-hanging boobs, seemingly unbothered about what people think about me, I wonder what the other women there think about me. Do they think, Wow I wish I had that confidence? Or do they think, How disgusting, clearly that woman [me] doesn’t care about hygiene or her appearance?
I remember when I was a teenager and I saw my mum in a swimsuit, her pubic hair sticking out the side of it. I thought how disgusting, I thought she was making herself deliberately disgusting. Perhaps a little part of me admired her for it though. It only took me 10 years to get it.
Optional toppings
🐡 Bait, tooting my own genitals here with a poem and some pubes
👠 Into the Flesh, an arty porno film of the Erika Lust empire, featuring a couple of beautiful bushes
🐒 @bodyhairmovement on Instagram (consuming hairier stuff is a good way to retrain your brain to see female body hair as normal)
This is not the last you’ll hair from me. Next week, I’ll turn my attention to the mothership: the hair on our heads. Read up!
— H. E.