HAIR
“I realized that the hair is there for a reason. It’s the leaf around the flower, the lawn around the house. ”
Dear Hadley,
I was shaving my armpits in the shower this morning and thought of you.
With the intention of getting waxed next weekend, I was two days into letting the hair grow out. But, predictably, I got sick of waiting and went back to the usual daily shave.
I love the feeling of a clean underarm. But I hate the daily tending. I also hate that I’m knowingly (willingly!) following this time-wasting beauty standard.
And yet, here I am.
Compulsively shaving my pits.
The reason I thought of you wasn’t armpit specific. It was just that as I stood there with my men’s military grade assault quattro razor, I realized how much my feelings about my hairs have changed over the years. Maybe, across time, yours will too?
In my teens and early twenties, I removed everything. I plucked my brows into two barely-there lines, hardly thicker than strands of waxed dental floss (fashion!). I shaved my blonde legs, hip to ankle, daily. I individually tweezed every single one of the little hairs on my big toes.
No Hair Left Behind.
But as I approached thirty, my philosophy started to shift.
It began with my brows. I did a year without any plucking. Full dedication to regrowth and fullness. My natural shape returned. I loved watching each new hair come in. Welcome home!
I loved that they eventually grew long enough to look messy after a good sleep.
Your bushy kid-brows were my inspiration. Your mom and I discussed how we hoped you’d never discover the tweezers. Could she somehow hide them from you forever? We both assumed that living an entire life with those gorgeous, untouched caterpillars would be a life advantage.
The hair on my head came along for the low-maintenance ride.
I stopped with the regularly scheduled highlights. I loved seeing my Dad-given dirty blonde return. I loved watching it change colors naturally with the seasons. I stopped obsessing about the ends being even. I let it grow and grow and grow. Occasionally I’d trim it with kitchen scissors. Snip snip, here or there. No formula, no attempt at precision. Unsurprisingly: no one ever noticed, commented, or cared.
When puberty hit, I thought pubic hair was disgusting. It was fine, of course, for the boys to have it. But not the girls, not me.
So as soon as mine started coming in, I started shaving it off. It was part of my daily routine. A shower was not a shower without a quick pass of the razor. At the time: a yellow, twin blade disposable Bic.
In my mid-twenties, I started scheduling regular Brazilian waxes. The instructions were the same every time: take it all off.
The technician became a close friend. I’d lay on the paper-covered table and we’d chat about our dating lives and the books we were reading as she tugged, pulled, ripped. Without breaking conversation, I’d flip over to hands and knees, so she could get in from behind. Eventually, she’d swivel the task lamp over to hand-pluck the remaining individual hairs that had stubbornly resisted the sticky muscle of the hot blue-green wax.
Then one day I woke up and realized I had become a grown woman who had never actually seen her own pubic hair beyond the waxable half inch.
I grew it all out. Full bush. For a long time, I didn’t even trim the sides. I watched this dark shock of hair grow down my inner thighs. An untamed primal poof, sticking out from my underwear. I delighted in the not-so-soft softness, the untangled tangle. I couldn’t stop looking in the mirror, admiring my grown up body.
I’d never felt sexier.
My ambition is to one day let it all grow wild and free. And then to go to the beach in my bikini—confident, unfazed by the disapproving gaze of others. Some days I dream of shaving my head and letting everything else grow long.
I’m not there (as evidenced by my morning shave, my yesterday pluck and trim). Though I admire those who are: my beautiful friend with her thick hairy legs and dark armpits; the gorgeous woman with her cleanly shaved head, refusing to hide or conform.
Maybe some day.
But for me, probably not.
You are beautiful and perfect and I love you forever.
Aunt Liz
Here’s a photo that served as my full bush inspiration. “Georgia O’Keeffe—Torso, 1918” by Alfred Stieglitz. The first time I saw this photo (it was sent it me by one of my favorite people. The power, strength, beauty. Her strong legs and full breasts and that proud mound of wild black.
