The Stigma Around Body Hair - My Experience

Seller Sellers’ Perspective The Stigma Around Body Hair - My Experience

As we all know, the beauty standard does not fit me, but that does not irk me as I was able to become confident with my biggest insecurity, which was my body hair. Although I am comfortable with my body hair now, it was a very long journey to get there…

I have always been insecure about the amount of hair I have; I’m sure my south Asian girls (and other hairy girls) feel me when I say I have hair EVERYWHERE. Having thick coarse hair on my arms and legs is something that stopped me from doing many things that I loved. One occasion that I remember was going into a swimming pool fully clothed at 10 years old as I didn’t want anyone to see my bare arms and legs. So naturally I started looking for hair removal techniques at the ripe age of 10 years old.

I started with shaving and the number of ingrown hairs I would get was ridiculous. I remember my friends asking why my arms felt prickly when my hair would grow back. This was the first comment they made on my body hair, so I moved onto the next hair removal technique, waxing, and I spent so much on wax strips I put a dent in my mum’s bank account, whoops! I stuck to this for a long time and put up with a lot of pain to try and fit the beauty standard. Then there was the hair lightening, the Nair, sugaring, the list goes on!

One thing that made me stand out when I was younger was the fact that I hit puberty a lot earlier than others. I got taller, curvier and looked older. This made me think that I always had eyes on me, so I felt like I had to do extra to not get weird looks or comments. And this mindset carried on into secondary/high school which was very damaging on younger me.

I hated the way that I looked (thankfully I don’t anymore) and this was due to, you guessed it, my body/facial hair. This was when I would get comments on my sideburns and arm hair, and let me tell you, my self-esteem was at an all-time low. I would get told that I was a man, that the amount of hair I had was unnatural etc. This made me question my femineity a lot and I struggled with this a lot.

A big turning point for me was 2 years ago where I realised that I was bisexual, and I was able to see the true meaning of feminity. I started to see all female bodies as beautiful on a different level and what came with that was the beauty of female body hair.

All female/female presenting bodies are beautiful no matter what and I was content with coming to that conclusion. So why wasn’t my body beautiful to me? I started working on loving myself, going out with my bare, hairy body and loving it unconditionally, which helped a lot.

If you are struggling with your image in terms of body/facial hair, there are a few things I would tell you to remember. It was only in the early 20th century that women started shaving, before then body hair on women was considered normal. It wasn’t until companies started profiting off of women being insecure about body hair, that insecurities about body hair increased.

In reality, body hair is not unhygienic, unnatural, gross and all of the above, it’s normal and having it doesn’t make you undesirable. If it wasn’t doing any good for you then why does it grow on your body? I personally think body hair on women is very hot and it’s a feeling which I love and I’m sure a lot of you can agree with me there. I’m really glad that it is becoming normalised ☺.

Some things I did to become comfy with my body hair:

Started wearing my armpit hair out – it’s rare you will have your armpits out and it isn’t very noticeable so it’s a good place to start.

Positive affirmation in the mirror – saying stuff like “I love myself and my body hair unconditionally”.

Stop talking to people who commented on my body hair – take the trash out of your life!

Threw out/donated all of my hair removal products – this is a good way to stop caring about your body hair as if you are busy, it can be annoying to go out and re-purchase these products.

Taking sexy pictures of yourself – lovely to look at if you’re feeling down, wear sexy outfits with your body hair out!

Stop associating body hair with laziness – I always see posts on social media of “glow ups” and girls calling themselves “gorillas” after growing their hair out. Letting your hair grow is natural and it’s okay if you aren’t comfortable with growing it out but it does set a harmful standard for younger girls.

I hope this helped! Also, count the number of times I said hair lol!