Why I Don’t Shave

Pictures follow, but all SFW. Unless you work at Gillette.

1: Because I Don’t Want To

Simples.

Reading into feminism (in particular this article) made me realise that I had a choice what I did with my body. It sounds so strange, but the idea that I could simply stop shaving had never really occurred to me before. Feminism gave me the confidence to go against the norm. It’s all about the way I present myself. Honestly, the second I stopped caring how much hair I had on my body, the less people cared.

From fuckyeahfeminist.tumblr.com

2. Because My Skin Hated It

One year, I got an epilator for my birthday. For those unfamiliar with the epilator, it is basically a series of tiny tweezers that pinch hairs out of your legs. It also looks like an instrument of torture.

eek

I exaggerate, on the whole they are not that painful. However in the summer of 2010, I put the epilator to work on my legs. I don’t know what happened. Maybe a combination of sun cream (factor 50!) straight after, exposure to the sun or the fate of time against me, but as my legs hairs started to grown back in every single one became in-growing.

It was honestly disgusting to look at and super itchy and painful. I tried tweezing them out, I tried exfoliating. All that achieved was that the spots where I had pulled the legs hairs out became puss-y and inflamed.

In now happier timez

It was hot, and the heat in England is so rare that it is the law you must go outside when it happens. In my desperation I did one of the most stupid things in my entire life. I shaved over my spots.

When I got out of the shower I knew I had made an awful mistake. All of the spots on my legs had been cut open, I had slipped when shaving and had taken off three layers of skin at the bottom of my right leg leaving a huge and jagged and bleeding cut. I looked down at my bleeding, puss-y, inflamed and angry legs and said to myself, ‘no, I’m done. I’m not putting myself through this again’.

Hipster leg hair

3. I Wanted To Experience New Things 

Suddenly not shaving anymore frees up a lot of time. You also learn things about your body that you never knew before. For example, I’m actually quite bald on my calves. Most of my leg hairs are very dark (like my eyebrows) but some are quite fair, even a little bit ginger (like my hair).

I love the feeling of wearing a long skirt and having a summer breeze rustle your leg hairs. I like the way that I can wash my underarm hair with shampoo. I love the way I can also dye my pit hair for the party season. Now that’s pretty rad.

From madeleineishere.tumblr.com/

4. To Fuck With People’s Minds

Seriously though some of the reactions people give you’d think I’d lopped off my arm. When most people see my pits they tend to have a Victorian palor curiosity about it. Everyone else will always ask variations of the same question:

“But don’t you, like, smell?”

No sweetheart, I will often reply, I think you are confusing my underarm hair with greenhouse gasses.

Bare jel of Julia Roberts

The hair on a woman’s underarms does not suddenly start to trap all the smells that leak from your pits and then emit them at regular intervals. They operate in the same way that male underarm hair operates in that they literally do not trap smells. You put on deodorant (spray on now that’s the only difference) and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOH NO SMELLS CRAZYYYYYYYYEEEEEE.

5. ‘I’m A Man And I Find It Icky. My Girlfriend Hates It When I Have A Hairy Back, So Why Am I The Bad Guy When I Tell Her To Shave All Of That’

Dude.

In a young people’s lives the start of shaving extranous hair is a right of passage. As men get older they can do whatever they like with there beards or lack of. For women, growing pitbeards (TM) is not cool, but seen as a sign of a mental breakdown.

Men are not bombared everyday with exact factory instructions of how the should look. There’s not whole gossip magazines dedicated to circling the one back hair that you forgot to take off because someone decided that you had to. Men can have beards, men don’t have to have beards. Men can be hairy, men can be unhairy(?). The difference when a woman does not shave, she’s not expressing herself. She’s a freak.

6. But Maybe…Future Shavings?

From time to time, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, I do like to take off all the hair. I’m not forgoing the cause or giving in, I just want to. On these occasions I like to sugar wax them off. Honestly, it’s the only thing that is super kind to my skin plus I don’t give any money to the Gillette Man.

I recommend to anyone who is curious about stopping shaving to go for it. If not then don’t. It’s all up to you.

So Fetch