Pain and stereotypes: Girls about how they stopped removing body hair
Shaving the legs and underarms are personal hygiene procedures. on a par with brushing your teeth, but whether to keep body hair or not is a decision that every woman has the right to make on her own. While the gloss is replete with calls for “putting the legs in order”, and advertising the hair removal salons takes on new offensive heights, some refuse the razor completely. Roxana Kiseleva asked four girls about how they came to this.
Text: Roxana Kiseleva, author of the telegram channel godblesstheconcealer
Tanya Koroleva
journalist
When I was a child, it never occurred to me that hair could not be removed, because Venus and Veet videos were infinitely twisted on TV, in which women shaved smooth skin. I terribly believed advertising then: I bought a razor, I shaved - and life became different! In addition, my mother, with whom we had a tense relationship, did not remove her hair, which only reinforced my teenage reasoning. At the age of twelve or thirteen, all the girls began to have body hair, and we rushed to clean them, although, in fact, we had nothing to shave. By the age of sixteen, I switched to waxing, because in response to shaving, my skin became covered with acne and a rash. It became even worse: the skin remained red for four or five days after the procedure, it was terribly painful, the hair grew; one of the serious inflammations even left a scar on the leg. It began to come to me that something was wrong here - fears were confirmed when a friend saw my legs and was horrified. Even the woman who made me hair removal did not believe the pain complaints, although she herself showed me how deeply the hair goes into the skin.
About two years ago I came across a video of the American Allure, in which five heroines told how they scored on hair removal. The closest to me was the story of a girl of Indian origin with very dark and long hair all over her body - she recalled how she cried after each hair removal from pain, not understanding why she was doing this. Then I discovered instagram activists, including from Russia, and realized how important it is to read about girls who live in the same reality as you and do not hesitate to show hairy parts of the body. Now neither legs, nor armpits, nor a bikini zone, I don’t touch if I don’t want to. The longest time I got used to the hair, knocked out of shorts - once forty minutes decided to go to the pool, because it seemed to me that they can be seen, even sent photos to her boyfriend. Now aesthetically, I am terribly fond of armpit hair: every morning I stand in front of a mirror and look at it. When they become so long that they begin to tickle, I shorten them with a trimmer. It turned out that this is a great gadget, they can cut everything in the world, from legs to eyebrows.
I will not be cunning - of course, this is not always a matter of pure desire. For example, I still find it embarrassing to wear short shorts and skirts when hair grows on the legs. I rarely ride the subway, and I would probably be scared to raise my hand in a sleeveless t-shirt in a full car. I think people are a little confused about my appearance - I usually look conventionally feminine, I go in skirts, sometimes in heels. I almost never come across an unpleasant reaction, although once a trainer was staring at me at the pool because of my armpits, it was ridiculous. Most of all my hair hits the trowel on a pedicure: they politely ask if I am recorded further on the epilation, and I also politely say “no” and have fun watching their reaction. Probably, if I didn’t have so much pain to remove the hair, I could not have thought about all this. I know people who do not feel anything on epilation of the pubic zone, and still sometimes I envy them a little. I want the hair on the female body to cease to be a statement, and become just one of the options. Have hair Fine. Not? It's not bad too!
Daria Chaban
an artist
Mom forbade me to remove my hair to the age of sixteen or seventeen, considering shaving as an "adult" occupation. Because of this, I was being bullied by peers, I was terribly afraid of wearing T-shirts and short dresses, raising my arms - it seemed that everyone would see my hair and laugh. The people who surrounded me considered the hair on the female body to be something unacceptable, unhygienic, vile and dirty. At the same time, shaving gave me a lot of inconvenience: there were scratches, poking bristles, the skin was dry and irritated, and the need to remove hair had to be constantly remembered. I would be glad not to shave, but very complex. It seemed to me that “something was wrong” with me, since all of humanity is shaving and it seems to be living normally with it. It was really more comfortable for me to have hair, and the “smooth body” did not give any special pleasure, even if I combed myself with a razor to the blood.
Then I began to communicate with people who did not consider the hair on the female body to be something shameful, I began to look at photos and drawings of hairy legs in the network. This shock brought irrational relief - it means that I am not the only one. It was very important for me to realize that there are girls with body hair, nobody considers them outcasts, they lead a full active life. Of course, the path from "Yes, there are such, but I still need to shave" to "And, actually, why?" was long. I have not yet overcome the embarrassment to the end, but I no longer fall into horror when I see black hair on my legs.
Varya Barkalova
junior editor of The Blueprint
I refused to shave about two years ago, but still can not say that I took my hair. It all started by chance: I came across a proposal from Philips - they gave a sample of a home photoepilator. The device promised to get rid of hair, albeit gradually, but without pain, ingrowth and irritation. I got into a group of testers. Before that, I shaved my armpits and legs with a machine, there was irritation on my skin, and on my legs she also dried and peeled; However, epilation options involving pulling out (wax, epilator) provoked hair ingrowth. In general, the photoepilator really saved me from these problems and, in part, from the hair. But this procedure is quite tedious and requires a lot of time, and after a few months I was just lazy to use it. By that time, the dark hair on my legs had thinned, and the new ones were growing lighter and thinner and seemed not so noticeable to me.
At the same time, I learned about feminism. The idea that getting rid of body hair is not necessary was for me not so much a revelation, but something stirred in my heart. Do I deliberately chose this beauty practice in my thirteen years? "No," I replied honestly to myself. It was from the category of "everyone does that." I admitted to myself that, firstly, I don’t like it when they tell me how to live, and secondly, I don’t like to shave. I still have mixed feelings about this. The hairs under the arms and legs do not seem to me to be particularly beautiful, but they just are - and that is normal. There is one factor that brings the most embarrassment to my attitude towards hair: I have no smell, but there is a perception that the hair under my arms and in the bikini area can accumulate an unpleasant smell. But then I found a compromise - I cut them with a typewriter, not very short, but neat. After all, I have a short haircut on my head, why shouldn't she be like that on other parts of me?
I am still not very comfortable in the summer in crowded places with clothes that open the shoulders and armpits. But I never noticed that someone else was staring, not to mention the comments on this matter. The only person who tells me about body hair is my partner. He periodically speaks in the spirit of the fact that "the hair on the body of girls is unaesthetic." In response, I suggest he shave his own, and also cite a number of arguments why I do not want to delete them in any way. Alas, it is in vain: with some frequency these comments still arise. Fortunately, around now they are increasingly talking about the diversity of beauty and gradually people get used to the fact that we are all different. About hair on the body, as well as about the features of the skin, scars, gray hair and other things, they begin to talk more often, recognizing their "right to exist." I hope that will continue to be even better.
Daria Serenko
an artist
When I was about thirteen, I sat on the couch and read a book. My dad was sitting next to me, and he lowered a sudden comment about the hair on my legs and said something like: "Dash, it’s time to shave your legs, you're not small." I then experienced a terrible feeling, because a man, my dad, shamed me for hairy legs. On the same day I shaved them and continued to shave them until the age of twenty one. Now I shave my legs every two to three months. This has nothing to do with the feeling of shame - just moving the fabric through the hair can sometimes be unpleasant, but in summer, when the legs are open, I haven't shave them for a very long time.
I came to this gradually. I have always experienced terrible pain and discomfort due to regular shaving: I have very delicate skin, constantly irritated. Later, when I began to be interested in this issue, I was not lazy - I read the history of hair removal and I realized that this is not even some kind of centuries-old tradition. Standards of beauty and standard change - and we ourselves influence them. For me now, hair on the female body is the norm, we sometimes even measure with the husband the length of hair on the legs. Of course, my views were influenced by feminism. I began to analyze the situation itself: why I am ashamed of these hairs, who inspired this shame to me, why a man does not shave his legs, and I shave. And it immediately became clear that this was not exactly my decision, and I myself want to be able to manage my body. I remember that I myself once believed and expressed that hairy female legs are “terrible”. For example, when I saw that a woman even had barely noticeable stubble, I could internally point out that she was “slut” or “badly watching herself.” Now, of course, I don’t think so and no longer pay attention to such things.
All my friends and friends are feminists and feminists for a long time. They respect the body of others and agree with me that a woman has the right to anything. If she wants to shave her legs, let her shave, if she doesn't want to, she can not touch them. But in order to create a situation of free choice, as we call it, different attitudes must first be given in society. For example, if in the situation when my father shamed me by the hair on my legs, another adult appeared and said that I could not shave them off, I probably would never have done that.
It happens that strangers in the subway stick to me with comments about my legs. I attribute this to the fact that our culture is quite sexist and men want to exercise control over female corporeality everywhere: her weight, her appearance, her beauty. It seems to them that their right to hair and ours is wrong for them logically connected with the rules of hygiene. But in fact, the presence of hair on the legs or in the armpits does not correspond in any way with the categories of neatness / untidyness.
Advertising of women's products is often tough and toxic. She takes on the same controlling function - trying to impress a woman that her body does not match the ideal. This is such a classic story, described by Betty Fridan in The Riddle of Femininity. I believe that advertising can not sell freedom of choice, but it can adjust the selling images and its imperative. It would be great if the manufacturers of razors and epilators included in the range of products for women who do not want to shave. For example, paint specifically for the armpits. Although, it seems to me, after ten years the means for hair removal and their advertising will die out in the form in which they exist now.
Photo: Billie