I have completed my ritual of spring -

[lotesse]

heteronormative removal of body hair is done and done. I don't mind being hairless - and I'm not willing to deal with the baggage that comes with wearing swirly femmey skirts with unshaven legs - but I do always rather miss my pelt once I've removed it. There's something about the idea of the hairy, natural, animal body that appeals to the latent hippie in me.

It's one of the reasons why I really like old books - because the ladies in nineteenth century novels? They ain't shaving no legs. Not to mention Shakespearean heroines or any girl in any medievalized high fantasy novel ever.

Comments

[aiffe]

FWIW I went seven years at a stretch without removing any of my (copious, dark) body hair. I wore the swirly femmey skirts and I wore things as dresses I'm fairly sure were intended to be shirts and I wore heels, and I wore tube tops and I didn't wear stockings and I gave no fucks. I dated and had jobs and ~went out in public~ and went swimming and generally just lived life. I've also seen other girls in skirts with leg beards, and thought some of them were cute.

Since then, I remove body hair occasionally. It's a "when I feel like it" kind of thing. I'm not terribly attached to it. It's just hair. I'm pretty hairy now, and I'm keeping it for the moment because I'm contemplating visiting extended family in the near future. The last time I saw them I had hair and they did some icky body policing stuff, so even though I've removed hair since then for me I can't stand for them to think they've "won" or whatever. They're going to deal with my hair and they're going to learn to like it.

(btw I am not sure how heternormative it is? God, prospective female dates prefer hairlessness far, far more than prospective male ones ever did.)

I don't think you should feel bad about removing your hair. I think you should remove it if you enjoy removing it. But I also don't think you're married to anything you do with your body hair. It doesn't take all that long to grow in, and it can be removed in ten minutes. It's not set in stone. If you have lingering regrets about removing it, or curiosity about what it would be like not to, I do advise you to give open hairiness a try. What it did for me personally was just remove this oppressive weight on my shoulders--this sense that Society had the right to judge and own my body. That my body was run by a democracy, of people who weren't me. That "baggage" gets so much lighter when you have just confronted it. I don't think I could be nearly as happy removing my hair as I am now that I know that it actually is fully my choice, that I have everything it takes to not remove it. That I'm not doing it out of fear or pressure, but because of my own aesthetic tastes and my desire to experiment with my own body.

There is no wrong choice to make when it comes to your own body hair. But until I discovered that through experience, I felt like there was no right choice.