When I was about eight years old I caught my sister shaving her legs. She was sitting on this rock out in the middle of the creek that ran past my parent’s house.I had been looking for her and calling to her but I couldn’t find her anywhere. There she was hiding in plain site, obviously doing something she shouldn’t. I swam out to the rock to get a closer look. “Mom and Dad are going to kill you,” I said.
“I don’t care.” Was her obvious reply.
Looking back on it now, I don’t think that was true. She cared. I’m sure she was terrified of my parents finding out. Unfortunately, I think she was more afraid of the ridicule of her friends, or the embarrassment of looking down at her own legs and seeing them full of body hair. She was more terrified of the shame that we as women are trained to feel about so many parts of our body that are “wrong” then her parent’s anger. My parents believe that if you shaved your legs then the whispy beautiful baby hair, would grow courser… which it does... They also warned us against changing anything natural about ourselves...which of course we did.
For most of my life I’ve felt wrong. I’ve felt awkward. Too short, too tall, too skinny, too fat, thighs too big, wide hips, no boobs, boobs too big, boobs saggy, and then the most powerful one, too hairy. This one was my constant major life long reason to hate myself. Yes, always it was me who was “wrong.”
My father may have been part gorilla. He was a big, strong, handsome man. He had a mostly human body. Hands, feet, arms, legs. The usual, except that all of it was covered in a curly layer of hair. All of it. Every inch of him. Hair that as a child was comforting and soft and smelled like oil paints and dad sweat. Hair, that as I got older became gross to me, something to tease my dad about. “Dad, why are you always wearing that sweater?” The sweater that became a white v-neck when he got older. What I wouldn’t do to hug that big smelly sweater right now.
This aspect of my dad, as much as it was a bit embarrassing, was acceptable. He was a man. Men were hairy. What was not acceptable, that I was shocked to find out in my teens, was that my mother too had hair, hair in unusual places for a woman. Hair on her legs, on her vagina, on her belly, under her arms, and yes people, on her face.
When I found out, not only was I disgusted, and embarrassed and shocked, but I was devastated, devastated because I too had felt, seen, and been teased already by the tiny little blonde hairs resting above my upper lip. Hairs who’s innocent blondeness would some day turn thick and black.
I showed my mom that I too had been dealt this horrific curse, and she recounted the terrifying story of her own realization of her “wrongness” to me. She relayed how she had bleached her facial hair for most of her life until one day when she picked my older brother up from sailing camp and he took her out on the ocean on his boat. And when they were out there in this peaceful, incredible, sunlit, magical adventure together, overwhelmed with pride and love she hugged and kissed him. And he turned to her with a look of love and a twinge of discomfort and disgust and said “Mom, you have a mustache, I can feel it.”
So she began to wax after that. Looking back, I have many memories of my mom walking around the house in her robe with her white fluffy mustache made with Joleen bleach. I know the smell of it so well. We had our jokes for sure. I remember watching her teach my sisters and I how to use it. I remember walking in to the kitchen and smelling wax cooking on the stove and hearing the little “clink clink clinking” of the double boiler she had made to heat up her face wax.
I can clearly smell and almost taste the memory of sitting on the toilet in the old apartment on the upper west side, talking to her as she pasted the wax to her face, waited till it cooled and then tore it off. And as she did this she always made sure to pass down her technique to me. The same way she taught me to cook, to garden, to take photographs, to have style, was the same way that she taught me that I was wrong and that I needed to hide and torture myself to be accepted. Not her fault.
Yeah, so this then became my sisters, and then me. The tradition was passed down. I feel as though I can recall the disappointment in my body for each new hair it grew. I can feel the shame of each time I was caught by a friend, a boyfriend, a lover, and then my own son with bleach or wax on my face or belly or legs. The demeaning question, “Did you shave recently?” by my husband at the time…” your legs are like razors.” My son snuggling me before bed and then whispering to me that I have a beard.
I could tell you about the day that my sister brought me to her waxing lady in the west village and how I was taught to deal with excruciating, mind blowing, tear producing pain from a Russian woman literally ripping all my body hair out of my extremely sensitive pure teenage skin. “Don’t worry, “ she scoffed ‘you will get used to it, it gets easier, you get used to the pain.”
I could also recap the story of how my best friend and I tried to wax each other one summer when we were living in a trailer in Utah together. How we screamed, laughed, cried, and then said, “fuck it” and went across the street to the peach orchard and stole peaches and ate them in the sun and smoked cigarettes. What I never said then that I want to say now is that she had hair just like those peaches. Soft and fuzzy and cute and hardly visible to the naked eye. I, on the other hand at 17 years old, had thick dark hair that reached from my head to my belly to my toes.
This is not to say that I am the only one. No, my friends. No way. The reason why I am obligated to write this story, the reason why the Universe has been reminding me constantly to say something out loud for 25 years is that I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE. This “hair” thing is no secret. For many many many years I thought this was my own hateful curse, but guess what. Women have hair on their bodies and ON THEIR FACES!!
You know how I know? I know, because, I see men and women naked all the time. I work as a fashion stylist and I am a woman. I undress men and women every day. I have been to spas and to dressing rooms and to locker rooms, to clothing swaps or to sample sales, where I see women naked in all their glory. I have seen all kinds of ages, shapes, sizes, and body hair of women of every culture. As a healer and bodyworker, I have also heard all kinds of things. People talk to me, they confess to me, and I listen with an open kind heart because I know. I know what it is like to go on a camping trip and bring a mirror and tweezers and say that you are going to the bathroom and then hurry to find a secret rock or tree that will hide you but not block the light so that you can pluck out your face and chin hairs before your friends see them and find out about them.
I know what it’s like to plan a date for Thursday and then make sure that you are shaved, waxed, bleached, and plucked by Wednesday night so that you don’t have bumps or ingrown hairs, or razor burn, and the hair hasn’t had time to grow back in yet. I hear all the models stories about waxing and laser, and their agent not telling them that they were shooting swimwear or lingerie that day and being unprepared. Un-prepared. That means not wasting an hour or more of your lifetime with shaving, or waxing, or getting laser, or bleaching, or using Nair, or plucking. That means letting people find out that they have hair on their body because it’s sticking out of the swimwear or lingerie and will have to get RETOUCHED so that the public doesn’t find out that women have hair. That means planning a vacation and not only having to pack and get everything else ready, but to make sure that every fucking hair is gone before you put that bathing suit on your pale little body and step outside.
In the past few years I have learned to become unapologetically myself in the sense that with friends, clients, and most strangers I practice transparency and blatant honesty. I talk with my friends about things like body hair and pooping and farting and having human bodies. By the way, we also get our periods, which is slowly becoming more acceptable….
I find that when you approach with honesty, you are met with honesty.
So in the past few years I found out that friends, aquaintances, and clients of mine have body hair, face hair, butt hair, nipple hair. You name the body part, it can probably grow hair. As a healer and an Eating Psychology Coach I am someone who works with clients to help them get to their best highest selves, I am constantly battling their hatred toward themselves and letting the light in for them, helping to bring them to a place of peace and comfort and love for their own bodies.
That doesn't mean that I am not still hiding. I am a Russian Jew and if I didn’t wax, pluck, trim, laser, bleach etc… you would probably not recognize me.
So why am I telling you this? Why am I outing myself, my sisters, my friends, all women…and some men. It is embarrassing. It feels awkward. I feel like I am probably ruining my chances of ever being with a man again. But, I don’t care. I don’t give a shit right now. I got my Brazilian wax yesterday from Yola, who I've known since I’m 17 years old, who knows everything about my life and my sister’s lives. She also knows exactly what my vagina and anus look and feel like, because she pours hot wax on them and then tears it off.
So yesterday I’m laying there, spread eagle, half naked, left leg propped on the wall, right hand holding my other knee, and I’m in PAIN. And I say to Yola, “I wonder why I’m so sensitive today, I should be used to this by now.”And then I hear a crack inside my body as my heart breaks a little more. Why am I used to this? What have I done? What the fuck am I doing here? Why is this acceptable treatment of my body?
Men do this shit too. I know… Not as many, but I see them in the salons too, getting their backs waxed, and their eyebrows plucked. I’ve helped them trim their balls, and cut their beards. I’ve seen hairless cracks that I’m sure were not naturally so. But why? What the fuck? Why have I spent $4000 on laser on my face and body that honestly didn’t really work? Why have I wasted thousands more dollars on waxes and creams and tweezers… and TIME!! So much time wasted. Hours of travel and salon time, and late nights in hotel rooms with my portable wax boiler when others were out doing who knows what… Dates, that I didn’t go on because I hadn’t shaved. Times that I did not take my clothes off with wonderful, kind, beautiful people because I was afraid they would see my un-waxed bikini line.Oh, but most of all the time wasted in hating myself. Blaming my body, like it’s her fault. Ever since that day when my sister opened my eyes to the idea that the hair on my body did not belong there, I have watched my own body in disgust. (Not her fault) (My sister or my body.)
Even with all of the self work that I do to unconditionally love my body, I still look down I and see my tan beautiful legs ruined by hairs, my private parts destroyed by the forest that grows on her, my breasts, my beautiful breasts would be so much more beautiful without those pesky hairs. Worst of all, every day when I look in the mirror and I see her face. Me, looking back at me, I am thinking, “EW! Can they see this?” Do they see the mustached shadow? Do they feel the prickles when they kiss me? Do they watch me from the side and cringe because they can see what I can’t. The ones I can’t reach or don’t notice in time to get them off of me.
I know that this is not the worst thing in the world. I know that there are people with missing limbs, starving people, people with Cancer, people who have no families, people who have much bigger “defects” then I. I know that I am lucky, and that I am beautiful, and that I have a wonderful child, and family, and a life that is filled to the brim with love. But I cannot be silent about this any longer. I cannot hide that I am utterly confused and shocked by what beliefs of hate we as a society have created about our bodies.
This hair on my body is here for a reason. Maybe it kept my Russian Jewish ancestors warm in the winter. Maybe it keeps my vagina safe from bacteria, maybe at one time on this Earth it was thought of as beautiful!
Maybe once upon a time a man grunted and snuggled up to his big hairy woman and traced the line of hair from her belly to her thighs and said, “I love you. I love this diamond shaped fuzz that covers my favorite parts of you and keeps you warm and clean.”
One time when I was on a styling job photographer was telling me about a couple that he used to see often in Woodstock. They were really in love and would walk down the street together holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes, laughing and kissing. He said that he could see and feel the love between them, that it was palpable. They were old, probably in their sixties or more, and they both had beards. Long beards. A man and a woman. Together. When he recounted that story, I thought to myself. I want that. I want that love. I want that companionship. I want that freedom. I want to escape the feeling of “I don’t want the beard,” because I am entrenched in the beliefs that society and our culture have bestowed upon me. I am completely brainwashed. Is freedom even possible?
When I was 17 years old, after my first year of waxing my own mustache, I started to secretly keep the strips. I started to make a pile of them. As my pile grew I was so shocked and outraged by the growth, by wax wasted, the money spent, the time spent, and all the hairs pulled that would just grow back in a few days anyway. I wanted to keep a record of this, and I thought, "if I could just keep doing this for a few years I could have an art show and just blow people’s minds." Imagine, an empty gallery with just a giant pile of a lifetime of wax and hairs.
Needless, to say I threw it away. However, I continued to imagine it growing my whole life, every time I waxed. Which is what brings me finally to write this story.
This is my pile. This is my truth. This is the shocker. We are human. We have hair. Why the fuck do we hide our humanity and shame from each other and ourselves by pretending to be what we are not? Who told us that hair was bad? Who asked men to trim the hair on their nostrils and their ears and their chests? I’ve had sex with a man with a shaved chest before and it is painful! It actually hurts your breasts and is not as sweet or gentle or comforting as the soft smelly reality of a man has kept his real hair there for you to lay your head on and weave our fingers through.
I want to know the history of why this happened. I want to know the real properties of all of the hair on our bodies and the health benefits. Can you tell me? Share your stories with me. Share your shame. Share you heartache. Show me your pile. Share your knowledge. In this day and age, when we are having to fight for clean water, and remove plastic from the bellies of our whales, and try to eat food that isn’t genetically modified or covered in poison, why am I choosing to waste time and money to battle my own body hair? Lets put the pieces together of how we came up with this and why. Does it make sense? Can we break free? Are we just feeding the money hounds with our fear of hair and our buying of all of these products that they are stoking the fire of our fear with. You got me society. I fear my own body. I am deathly afraid of my own hair on my body. My fear of my body hair has kept me from experiencing life to the fullest. Now what do I do with that? How do I break free? How do I continue to learn to love myself unconditionally when I carry this judgement?
For one thing, when my son asks me at 10 years old why his legs and arms have hair and his friends don’t, and why I, his mother, have hair on my face, I am going to reply, “Because you come from a very strong lineage of brilliant, funny, creative, loving ancient gypsy magic people who were very hairy. They needed their hair for reasons unknown and now you need yours, or else your body wouldn’t put it there. I love you and every hair on your body”
Here are some other blogs and forums that I found regarding this topic when I was searching the internet for shaving photos. I invite you to look at them. I had no idea that this information was out there until after I wrote this. Please add comments at the bottom of this or email me with your story of your pile. stellafay@gmail.com. I am really curious about you and how you feel about this.
https://www.amazon.com/Bearded-Lady-Kindle-Single-Altman-ebook/dp/B007II00XE
http://www.lostateminor.com/2014/03/11/nsfw-overgrown-lady-manes-question-views-beauty-grooming/
http://our-skin.tumblr.com/archive
http://forum.caithness.org/showthread.php?165528-Hairy-Woman&s=923c057756d72d55d326082b8b597466
http://www.nanda-books.com/2012/11/benefits-of-hair-in-our-bodies.html
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/news/a56952/huda-kattan-shaves-her-face/
and more photos just because I think they are funny.
