The Politics of Body Hair
I stuffed my backpack into the locker and quickly changed into my gym clothes while Ms. Pearson blew into her whistle at the group of girls applying lip gloss from Claire’s. I swifted into my gym shorts, and rushed into the court. Some girls wore leggings underneath their shorts and crossed their arms on top of their stomach, as we were all entering the daunting age of puberty.
“Anbar, get to the front of the court! You’ll be choosing teams today”. As I struggled to get through the crowd and walked in between my classmates, I heard snickers and titters slowly elevating until I got to the front.
All of them were gawking and pointing, holding in laughter until their cheeks were puffy.
“What are they staring at?” I thought. I looked down and noticed the prickly hairs on my legs standing up from goosebumps. I never noticed until that very moment how long they were. At that very moment, it felt like the hairs were growing and growing until it would tangle around me and swallow me whole.
From a young age, most girls are taught to believe that something so natural, body hair, is something to diminish or erase because we would be seen as “unladylike” , or “masculine”. We’re conditioned to shave every part of our body to look pure (whatever the heck that means) and appealing to men. As if something so normal that grows out of our bodies naturally is disgusting. However, in my South Asian household, no one would bat an eye at my hairy arms or legs. Women back home in Bangladesh would have unruly long lush thick hair on their arms legs, with bushy eyebrows. But in America, it was the complete opposite.
The first time I ever shaved in my life was when I was nineteen-years-old and I had done it against my parent’s permission. The moment I came out of the shower, my parents were in complete disbelief and I honestly think my dad was on the verge of disappointed tears. If my parents allowed me to remove my body hair before, I would’ve started right when middle school started. I only became aware of the my body hair right when I started junior high, and that was when I first entered a white predominately space in my entire life. Before that, everywhere I went everyone was a person of color and looked similar to me. I was in a complete bind between Western societal beauty expectations and South Asian standards too.
Things have recently changed as the third wave of modern feminism has hit the Western hemisphere, and women are now creating a statement with their unshaven armpits. However, while the intentions are good, it constructed a political system surrounding women of color and their body hair. From the perspective of living as a woman of color, white women have also encouraged patriarchy in their own ways. Throughout my life, it has always been white women telling me that I’m hairy. It was the female students in the gym that were hiding their snickers behind their hands. In i-D’s article, The Problem with Feminist Body Hair , Niloufar Haidari explained that “Women of color are often left feeling as if we are still on the outside due to our often naturally darker and more visible hair.” Women of color who have body hair, even in today’s day of feminism where body hair is proudly looked upon, are deemed as dirty and unhygienic while white women are seen as making a feminist statement or a protest against society.
Tasnim Ahmed interviewed different women from the South Asian diaspora for Thought Catalog to discuss when and why they started to shave as well as exploring the politics of body hair. Most replied saying that they started at the early age of 12 and one even commented saying that she shaved almost every other day. The reason why most women of color shave is not only because the system of patriarchy placed upon them, but racism as well.
I clearly remember when I stole a razor from my dad’s packet when I was about to take a shower at the age of 13. I was dedicated to shave my entire body but the fear of my parents yelling at me stopped me. However, I couldn’t help but feel ugly or shameful when I looked at my coarse thick hair since the white girls in my class wouldn’t stop bothering me about it. But I’m glad that my parents never allowed me to shave until I became an adult and I was educated about my decision to shave. They explained to me from an early age that my hair was nothing to be ashamed of and it was normal just like the hair on my head or eyebrows. Of course, young women should be able to dictate whatever they want to do and shaving your body hair doesn’t mean you let the patriarchy win. But the question on everyone’s mind is how young is too young? I can’t say. But I can say that the only way to go about it is to educate young girls from an early age that our body hair does not measure how feminine we are before we allow ourselves to hand them a razor. Also, the young women in our families shouldn’t be the only ones that should be educated, but boys too. Once we create an open discussion and push the envelope to destigmatize the perceptions of body hair, perhaps we wouldn’t have to worry how young is too young for a girl to shave.
