Hair, Au Naturel
I’ve always had a tenuous relationship with my hair, particularly the stuff on my head and forearms. The hair covering my scalp is a bitch, a grueling combination of body, frizz, curls, waves, fine, and thick—wholly uncooperative with a mind of its own. Too much time and money has been spent on changing the cut, color, and texture of my hair. I’ve also tried shaving the problem away at least three times (growing that out is an even bigger bitch). My arm hair isn’t as bad; it’s just dark and there’s a lot of it. I’ve waxed it off twice in my life, and regretted it both times. Not because it was painful (which it was) or I missed the hair (never), but because the black stubble is so much uglier than the fine soft hair it eventually becomes.
Over the years, I’ve made peace with the hair on my head and arms. I don’t love it, I don’t like it. I simply accept it. Because constantly hating or being bothered by parts of myself is exhausting. Better to just accept the things that make me me, and move on to shit that matters. “Good” hair, no hair, smooth whatever—these things are all highly subjective and completely manufactured anyway.
Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne, 1919
As a kid, the things I desired most in life were my period and a razor. Christmas 1998 I received the latter, and as the hasty tearing of wrapping paper revealed my very first electric shaver, I screamed utter joy. Hairy legs and pits, be gone! Only girls suffered hairy legs and armpits, said my twelve-year-old brain; women, on the other hand, did not. Women were wise, smooth, hairless, magical goddesses. And now I was on my way to becoming one. For the next 21 years, I diligently kept the stubble at bay, my trusty razor imbuing the planes and contours of my skin with its silky vixen superpowers.
In my late 20s I started to reconsider the habit of shaving. Who I was doing it for and why? Was it making me feel better or worse about myself? What did hair and stubble and smoothness mean to me? By this point, I was friends with several women who chose not to shave, and I found that I had a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for their decision. Not because I thought it was brave or cool, but because it looked freeing. No longer chained to the razor or fretting over stubble. No more nicks. No more cartridge refills, no more shaving cream. It was all very appealing.
So I made the decision to stop shaving my legs and armpits for good in 2019. It took about a year for the phantom hair-pulling sensations to disappear (it does indeed stop), and about two to three years for everything to grow out. “Everything” amounted to far less than I anticipated. In the beginning, I’d braced myself for the loss of delicacy, of “woman”. But the opposite happened. As my hair grew, I came to realize that the razor had imposed limits on my femininity. Free of the blade last, I found that there was so much less to worry about, and felt totally liberated and self-assured in my own skin. Magical vixen goddess, au naturel.