Sideburns, peach fuzz, eyebrows, pubic hair, you name it, we’ve all questioned it at one point or another. Why does it have to grow so quickly overnight? Is it really true that it’s going to grow back thicker after just one shave? Why don’t other girls have hair as thick as mine in the places that are most visible? And of course, why the hell don’t men have to worry about this?
Over time I thought I would find the perfect solution to all of these predicaments or eventually grow out of them, that these worries were just a phase. I used think that the women I admired, women like Laverne Cox, Sheryl Sandberg, or Michelle Obama, never ever waste their time thinking about body hair. If I wanted to be half as incredible as they were, how could I possibly waste my time with concerns as “superficial” as the hair on my calves? I need to worry about real issues, serious issues I thought. In my eyes, if my male counterparts were not spending their time thinking about this, then I didn’t need to either. They had always held the cards, so why give them, or anyone else, another opportunity to make women feel disadvantaged by the things we can’t control?
The aforementioned questions and concerns had always jumped out at me when I questioned my body hair. If my hair was bothering me during an exam, and I wanted to put it in a ponytail, I would stop myself from doing so in fear that my sideburns would be too exposed. How crazy is that?! I would stop myself from focusing on my education because I was worried about how other people would perceive my body hair. You want to hear something crazier than that? I still think about things like this. I still worry about plucking my eyebrows every morning, and whether or not my pubic hair is “controlled” enough (whatever that’s supposed to mean), or if the back of my thighs have been properly cleared of every last millimeter of exposed hair.
Here’s what I’ve realized though: worrying about my eyebrows does not make me any less powerful, intelligent, or capable than any other person. I am allowed to worry about whatever I want, because this is my body and I am in charge of it. Every man or woman out there is going to worry about something different and that’s okay. I know that women all over the world, including girlbosses like Michelle Obama, think about body hair to a certain extent. That doesn’t make them any less powerful! In fact, it simply makes them human.
So why are we so hard on ourselves? Why does it seem like we have the most prominent flaws in the world, and why can’t we recognize that every single person around us has probably felt that way too? Laverne, Sheryl, Michelle, and myself, are all allowed to be intelligent but also be authentic. Body hair is not the barrier between your current self and your ideal self: it will always be around, and it will always be a part of your most beautiful self. I will have a relationship to the hair on the back of my thighs for the entirety of my life journey, and I am determined to never make myself, or anyone else, feel like that relationship is anything to be ashamed of.