Pain. Pink tax. Annoyance. Cuts. Razor burn. Tame. Remove. Conform. Hate. Damn the patriarchy and my own mother for telling me I need to shave. Welcome to my analysis of (my) body hair. 

Cue an image of your elementary school. Narrow in on that one day in 4th or 5th grade, you know the one…it’s sex ed day (except not really because I live in Texas and sex doesn’t actually exist until after you’re married in a good Christian church under the eyes of God. Bonus points if you’re Catholic and have never even shared a bed). All the girls go to one room and the boys to another. The girls learn about periods (but oops it’s too late for me on that one) and how our bodies will start growing hair in weird places (too late again) and we are handed a sanitary pad as a marker of our journey into womanhood. I go home embarrassed about my leg hair (again) and finally cave and let my mother teach me to shave (she has been trying to convince me it was time for months) and so begins my first conscious, constant re-performance of femininity. 

10 years of shaving, waxing, plucking, and chemically removing “unwanted” body hair does a lot to a person. I was 19 when I declared enough and decided to donate my unused razors to my mother (that was a fun moment). The look of disgust I am met with every time my body hair graces the eyes of an observer has come to bring me a smug sense of satisfaction. That’s right I am a woman with leg and pit hair, go on, ask me about it. I dare you. My version of femininity is one that does not match theirs. My body hair is a masculine feature on a woman’s body. My body hair is my performance of female masculinity, but to me it is just my version of femininity. 

Having not shaved (well except when I trim with my men’s electric grooming tool because I am going to see my grandparents or I have an interview or work event) for about a year now, I have become more aware of the ways in which body hair shapes gender. Gender must be constantly re-performed and this takes on an interesting literality when we look at body hair. Hair grows (obviously) and so women (you know, the heterosexual cis-gendered women) must constantly shave it off again, and again, and again. And not only do our own bodies remind us to shave (with the prickly, itchy stubble and the ingrown hairs and the razor bumps) but so do our friends and families and the constant stream of razor commercials. Let’s explore those commercials for a bit shall we?

I remember I was so excited to see that Billie ad in 2018, that I immediately went and ordered a shave kit. There was finally a woman in an ad with body hair like the rest of us and honestly it was ridiculous that this didn’t happen until 2018. All shaving ads before 2018 used already HAIRLESS women! The ads could not even show a woman with body hair, a masculine feature, for a few seconds or else they risk discrediting their brand as a brand from real women. Around the same time that we see the media showing more “natural” women (as if women were unnatural before) we see celebrities starting body hair trends. These influencers were dying their pit hair pink, embracing bushy brows, and maybe even letting a little hair show on a rogue leg through a dress slit. And then we had trends promoting feminine masculinity. I look back on this and can’t help but be angry. Body hair is not a fad or a trend, it just fucking exists and grows and sheds. It simply is. 

But nothing in a gendered world can just be. It must be in relation to gender. And so my body hair is a masculine feature on my female body and it is a choice I make to present in this way. I perform a conflicting picture of femininity. I am a cis-gendered woman and I look that way. My gender is never questioned, but my choice to contradict my gender by growing body hair is constantly judged. My femininity is not fragile to me, but my feminine masculinity is threatening to others. My mother’s fragile femininity is challenged each time I step into my home as a “hairy liberal hippie” (yeah my family really calls me that, they say college changed me, I say it freed me) and she immediately tells me to shave or points out my hair as gross and unladylike. She asks me “How can you stand yourself like that Ashley? You cannot think that looks good.” 

Feminine. Masculine. Woman. Pit hair. Pubes. Hairy legs. Beach body. Stares. Dares. Freedom. Fast showers. Welcome to my reality: life with body hair. 

-Ashley Fitzpatrick