For whatever reason, sometime during March I was overwhelmed with a sudden and acute desire to dye my armpits. I had seen a few pictures here and there of celebrities, models, and internet hipsters who had done so, and I always just kind of scrolled past without much of a response. I had never considered doing it myself until, out of nowhere, I decided to.
Once the decision was made, I was so eager. I looked at my armpits twice a day in the mirror, tracking their progress, wondering when they'd be ready. I knew I wanted to go blue. A small part of me considered pink; dyeing my armpit hair pink would be the ultimate subversion of modern notions of the girly color (which, know your history, used to be the boy color, because pink was too similar to red, which was associated with blood and war, and so was considered too violent for women). But, in my heart, I knew I wanted blue armpit hair.
When I announced on Facebook that I was going to do this, I got resounding cheers from my friends. A few people said they had done this before and loved it and were excited for me to try it. But there were some comments that, though they weren't outrightly negative, had some not-so-approving subtext. I was "reminded" that I didn't have to do this to be a feminist. Um, duh. This was my first major problem.
I did not decide to dye my armpits because I thought it would make me feminist. I am already a feminist; it's because I am already a feminist that I feel free to have armpit hair and dye it, and not really care one way or the other if people find it attractive or "becoming." I found it quite patronizing to be reminded of how to be a feminist, and to have my expression written off as a call for attention. I'm just doing this for fun; leave me alone!
Little did I know, the worst was yet to come. The night I dyed my armpits, a friend came over to keep me company. We watched "Cutthroat Kitchen" as the bleach blistered the sensitive skin under my armpits, and laughed as I applied the dye to the hair using a fine toothed comb. I asked her to take a picture to commemorate the moment, which she did, and which she then (with my permission) posted to her Twitter.
A few days later, I was tagged in a comment on Instagram by a user I didn't recognize. When I followed the notification, I saw that same picture my friend had posted, but side by side with some female soldiers. The user had tweeted the two pictures, asking his followers which was the more empowering—the millennial feminist harpy or the freed ISIS sex slaves fighting back against their captors. My response was, duh them, I'm not doing anything! I never said, "Look at me, I've decided to fight for equality by dyeing my armpits in some radical stance! I am the most badass woman ever!" But there was still this belief that I was doing this to make a statement, that I thought somehow dyeing my armpit hair would liberate all women, that I believed my patriarchal oppressor had his foot on my throat as a Western woman, and that my suffering was the pinnacle of tragedy.
And, frankly, the fact that I got such a negative response just demonstrates that maybe dyeing my armpits is a feminist act, and that I am being bold in doing so. The people tweeting at me insisted that nobody cared about my armpits and asked why I was so self-important that I thought my blue armpits were significant. Really? No one cares? So why is this tweet—from a 20-year-old college student with a handful of followers—suddenly getting retweeted by hundreds of angry men's rights activists? I was never the one making a big deal out of this, or suggesting it was a significant act.
I replied to a few of the tweets because I just couldn't help it. People were calling me ugly (in more explicit terms than I'll provide here), "deluded," and "a cancer." Did they really think when I read their comments about how unappealing my blue armpits would be to "all men" (despite the fact I have a boyfriend who doesn't really care one way or the other what I do with my armpit hair) that I would gasp and immediately take a razor to them? It would have taken too much effort to reply to each and every one to say "I. Do. Not. Care. What You. Think." So I ignored them, figuring even me spelling it out wouldn't help get the idea across. I ended up muting several dozen accounts, as my phone was nonstop buzzing with this antagonistic misogyny.
What I wanted them to know perhaps more than the fact that I wasn't really concerned with whether they thought I looked good, bad, or stupid, was that none of these social justice issues are mutually exclusive. While women in the United States may not be dealing with rampant female genital mutilation, that doesn't mean we're living on cloud nine in some beautiful, egalitarian, pluralistic country. I shouldn't have to tell you that I condemn sex trafficking in Thailand every time I want to mention how frustrating it is that women here pay ridiculous prices for necessities like feminine hygiene products (I even feel like it's necessary here to say I'm aware that women around the world don't have any access to these products) or birth control. If I post about the gender pay gap (and how that 77 cents statistic is actually even lower for women of color), I shouldn't have to clarify that I also care about the women living on less than a dollar a day in parts of the majority world. Injustice is injustice, and I won't stand for any of it, but I simply can't list all the things wrong in the world to remind you I know they exist when all I want to say is, "Gee, beauty standards are stupid, huh?" and post a picture of my fabulous blue armpits!
Feminist act or not, what I do with my body is my decision; I shouldn't need the permission of my boyfriend, husband, father, male politician, or online troll to make those decisions, so long as my decisions don't threaten the rights or safety of others (really, it is not complicated, people). You don't like my pits? Uh, okay. But I'm not obligated to do anything in light of your opinion. I'm not a doll that you get to dress up. I'm not here to look good and be looked at; my value is not in my body and what you think of it. Clear?
If you want to dye your armpits, I recommend it. I love my teal blue pits. I adore them; they are so fun. And while it can be hard, if not impossible, to reason with people on the internet, I found that my wild pits were a great talking point with real people - it was a great opportunity to gently encourage them to think about why it's such a "big deal." But be prepared to have everyone and their mothers assume you are doing this as some loud, whiny, uninformed feminist statement and not just because, surprise surprise, you felt like it.
