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The ritual of hair removal goes back to ancient Egypt, where women started using beeswax and sugar-based waxes to take off unwanted hair. A practice that survived until our days, and atill plays a role of special importance for women’ s aesthetics. In 1915, Gillette democratized the razor for all women, which prompted a mass accession to underarm shaving. None of women’ s body parts are safe from the dictatorship of hairless smooth skin, so much so, that in the late 80’ s the pubic area was the target. Seven Brazilian sisters opened shops in New York City and popularized the full Brazilian Wax, the waxing technique that removes all hair in the pubic area. Sex and The City made the style even more popular in one of its episodes, teaching women all over the world how their pubic area should be styled. While some women throughout history have broken the mold- think about Frida Kahlo or Sophia Lauren- the general conception that women are ought to have no hair still remains. From an early age we are introduced to the fact that hair removal constitutes a warrant to womanhood, a societal standard, hard to shake. Keeping our body hair doesn’ t even constitute an option, one that could be much simpler, painless and cheaper.
But in the past few year, embracing body hair has trickled into the mind of millennials and social media has enabled the spread of individual voices that are not satisfied with the current beauty standard. Female empowerment and respect for one’ s body is in the forefront of the new body hair movement. From niche Instagram accounts to mainstream advertising campaigns( e. g. & Other Stories featured women with underarm body hair in their lingerie campaign for 2015), body hair is the natural feature enabling women to reclaim back their body.
PRETTY FACE caught up with Megan Buys, a 19-year-old from Sydney, Australia. On her Instagram account(@ meganfromthemoon) she shares her journey through self-love and acceptance and challenges the beauty concepts that haunts women today.
When did you become aware of your body hair? What are the memories from your first removal? Awareness of my body hair was an ever-present idea for me. I grew up with dark hair on my legs as a child, and as my friends and I all moved towards the beginning of puberty I was told consistently that I“ needed” to shave them, especially by the girls in the year above me. Something I noticed when looking back was that at the time it was never the boys who teased me or pressured me, but always other girls. I begged my mum to let me shave my legs and after much argument she finally let me. It was this strange rite of passage in our culture when a mother shows a daughter how to shave properly. For her as a somewhat conservative woman, I believe it felt like I had let go of my childhood and was now desperate to be seen as a woman. This was true, I wanted to be seen as older,“ sexy” and“ grown up”. When I grew underarm hair, it was a normal thing to shave it straight off, I didn’ t think twice about it and nor did anyone else I knew. When I began to grow pubic hair, it was again a normal thing to keep it“ neat and tidy”, and when I reached the age of 14 it became instilled on me by my peers and my society that I had to shave it all off because“ that’ s what boys like”. And I did, all through the first relationships I was in between the ages of 14-16. Shaving my entire pubic area was always for them, not for me.
When did you stop removing your hair? I stopped removing all of my body hair at the beginning of this year [ 2016 ]. I had experimented with not shaving my legs for quite a while before that, but then I travelled to Indonesia and Hawaii where it was common for women not to shave and I finally felt comfortable lifting up my arms. Now being back in Australia, I feel this sense of embarrassment if I show my underarms and also if I’ m being at all sexual with someone I want to be“ neat and tidy” down there. Becoming more confident with my underarm hair has been an interesting challenge that I continue to explore.