In fourth grade, all the girls in my class began shaving their legs. In no way was I ready, or willing to use a razor. Terrified, but succumbed to peer pressure, I began shaving with an electric razor.
In fifth grade, a male classmate made some comment to me about how I had hair on my knuckles. It was something along the lines of how I was hairy than him. So, I began to shave the hair off of both my fingers and my toes.
In seventh grade, I was walking down the hall in my dance team uniform that hung off my shoulders. Behind me, two boys were making jokes about how hairy my back was. That night I asked my mom if she could wax my back. Reluctantly, she did.
Around ninth grade, I became increasingly aware of just how dark all of my body hair is. I became fixated on plucking the hair between my eyebrows almost daily, terrified by the idea of a unibrow. I found myself constantly concerned, nearly obsessed with whether it looked like I had a mustache.
By tenth grade, I was removing hair from my legs, my armpits, my knuckles, my toes, my back, my face, and my arms. I truly believed that my bodily hair, or the lack thereof, equated to my womanhood.
I have found that many young women have very similar stories, many of which are much more scarring than anything I have ever experienced. Although my hair is dark, I never faced the struggle of combatting both dark and thick hair.
But why? At what point did our society decide that to be a woman you must also be hairless? At what point did we, as women, decide to agree to these rules? Perhaps I should take this moment to reiterate the purpose of hair.
Just as the hair on your head, in your nostrils, or eyelashes, bodily hair exists to protect you from foreign matter that may be harmful. It is rather incredible what hair does for our bodies.
We are told to never cut or trim the whiskers of a cat, right? If you do so the cat will have no sense of its surroundings as those whiskers are used to sense the space surrounding the cat. Without their whiskers, the cat would lose the ability to judge distance. The result? An adorable cat running into walls, furniture, and all other objects.
Just as the whiskers on cats, our body hair serves as sensors, as protectors.
Our body hair is used to help regulate body temperature. When it is cold outside our arm hairs stand up for a reason; these hairs move vertically to better trap the heat near the body. Our hair just wants to protect us. And since when are women invincible to cold weather?
And let's just spin a minute on this -- who is it that is so privileged to be nearly hairless? Babies. That's who.
As women, we shave, pluck or wax nearly every inch of our bodies with the gaze of men in mind. We are told that men do not like hair; they are repulsed by it. So, are we really saying that men find women most attractive when they resemble babies or children?
Maybe rather than blindly agreeing to be hairless we should start rethinking what it means to be a "woman".
