I candidly remember the first time I became aware that humans had hair in places other than their heads and faces. I was eight years old, watching "High School Musical" with my family. Troy Bolton lifted his arms to stretch in his no-sleeve basketball uniform, and there it was: an armpit full of thick, brown hair.
I was disgusted.
"Ew! I'm so glad girls don't get hair there."
My mom was sitting right next to me, ready to deliver the bad news.
"Girls do get hair there when they grow up. Many of them just choose to remove it."
Dread filled my young heart. It was going to happen to me. I was going to have Troy Bolton's gross hairy armpits. That night, I went to bed and shuddered thinking about my dark future as a woolly mammoth. Thankfully, morning's light and my distractible imagination swept those thoughts away, and I didn't think much about body hair again for a few years.
Flash forward to age 13. One sweltering summer afternoon I put on my hot pink, peace sign tankini and joined some friends for a pool party. It took me a while to notice that some of the other girls were shocked and staring at me — at my armpits. I looked down and saw that my much-feared Troy Bolton life had begun. Mortified, I avoided tank tops until I could get my hands on a razor.
I became more aware of how my peers and the media talked about body hair. Girls weren't supposed to have any hair anywhere other than their heads; otherwise, they were considered disgusting and unhygienic. Guys, on the other hand, could be as hairy as they wanted, and it wouldn't be disgusting at all. This led to an even deeper embarrassment of my natural body. Every time I changed into my gym shorts having forgotten to shave my legs night before, I felt like I needed to hide.
Unfortunately, the societal disgust with women's body hair didn't disappear when I left middle school. To this day, people of all genders shame women who choose not to shave. When you think about it critically, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why is a woman who doesn't shave considered unhygienic but a man who doesn't shave is just normal? There is no difference between men's and women's hair that makes women's hair somehow more "gross." All of the stigma is based on our deeply flawed cultural norms of what is acceptable and attractive.
The truth is that body hair is something that happens to human beings. There is nothing unsanitary about it as long as it is washed and regularly kept clean. I'm not telling everyone who shaves to stop. Personally, I don't like having any body hair, so I remove it. That is my choice because it's my body. I'm in charge of myself, and nobody else. Therefore, it is not my right to tell anyone what to do with their bodies. Hair is not inherently disgusting on any person of any gender.
To shave or not to shave: the choice is yours — not society's, not your friends', not your partner's. Yours.