I Haven’t Shaved in Years: My Body Hair Journey

Image Courtesy: Reader’s Digest

My earliest memory of finding out about shaving was from an advertisement on TV. It was soft, luscious skin, pink and pretty. It looked like the legs were sitting in a cloud, and then the girl ran her hands up her legs, feeling the smoothness. Her small, skinny legs. I wondered what those girls on the TV would say if they could talk. I wonder if they would scream or try to get out. I wonder if they would stay pretty.

In elementary school, I started to get my eyebrows waxed when someone at school told me I had a unibrow, and I was upset about it. I told my mom, and she let me get my eyebrows waxed. Then in middle school, someone asked me why I had hair on my legs, and I didn’t know the answer, so I made it so that I stopped having hair on my legs. I really didn’t know why. I just knew the girls on TV that don’t talk.

I find it strange that I was strongly suggested to look a certain way that I didn’t want to look and felt ashamed for the way I naturally look. I wish that it was an honest suggestion and not packed with subtle misogyny and societal standards. I should be able to shave my legs if I want or not, shave them if I want, and both those options are completely fine. People that regularly shave their body hair are amazing, and people that choose not to are also amazing. I just want to say that it is totally okay to like to shave your legs and not have body hair. It is totally up to you and your choice because it is your body. Some people see shaving as a sign of femininity and really enjoy not having body hair and that is great, too. But in my story, I only shaved because I desperately cared about fitting in with a norm and what people thought of me.

Image Courtesy: Nykaa

I grew my leg hair out again when I moved into the woods to live in my car. It was a different type of living, out in the middle of nowhere, away from a lot of the constructs of society. I did it because it was the beginning of a pandemic, and I didn’t want to be in a big city.

Now shut away from society and its standards, those standards seemed so arbitrary to me. There were enormous cliffs out there that are so big only birds can capture their whole view. You can’t even look at them all at once. You have to keep tilting your head so far back you almost fall over to see everything. There are trees with leaves as long as your arm that was born way before you and will die way after you. There were all these monumental things so much bigger than me, and I was worried about whether to shave my legs or not?

After seeing what I’ve seen, nothing seems more insignificant. People have said that I am “cool” for defying beauty standards by wearing short skirts when going out to let all my dark leg hairs be ogled at and admired for their deep beauty and rarity.

Image Courtesy: Strike FSU

But it’s not like I’ve gone on some sacred journey to self-love, or that I’ve manifested my way to f**k-it-all, or that I made a conscious decision to give up shaving and singlehandedly reclaim and reshape all of womens’ beauty standards, but simply that I’ve found that it is one of the most insignificant things. The way that people think I should live or look or dress is one of the most insignificant things in the world that has absolutely no effect on me at all unless I let it.

There’s no moral to this story. There is no “I know the way to reimagine beauty, and I have the top 5 secrets!” There is just me and my unibrow and the little hairs on my fingers and toes and everywhere and the clothes that I like and the earrings I like to wear and the body wash that is not the most exfoliating luscious 5 in 1 rejuvenating volumizing soap. It just smells good and it’s from the grocery store.

Strike Out,

Writer: Marena Benoit

Editor: Breanna Tang

Graphic Designer: Katie Boucher

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