Yesterday, I did something I normally wouldn’t do. I wore an armpit-baring top out in public. Why is this anything worthy of note? Well, some of you may not know, that I don’t shave at all or anywhere. OK, maybe once a year for a wedding, funeral, or very important party, but for the last few years, I haven’t even bother with doing it for those occasions. Therefore, I have armpit hair, as is normal and natural for human beings. Since this does occasionally freak some people out (or gross them out), I usually wear clothing in public which hides the fact that I can’t be bothered to scrape a sharp implement over some of the most sensitive skin on my body. But yesterday, with the temperature outside being well over 100ºF and my mood being in the vicinity of cranky, I decided I just didn’t give a damn if other people are incapable of tolerating armpit hair on a woman.
It was nice. It was nice feeling air on my skin, and I felt far less hot and bothered about having to go out into the hell-like August weather. It was nice walking into the coolness of the grocery store and immediately feeling the coolness of the grocery store. If anyone was freaked out, I didn’t notice. I wouldn’t have cared, because really … it felt nice to wear one of my favorite tops outside my own home and to not feel like I have to cover my body to protect other people’s ridiculous sensitivities on the subject of female beauty. I will be wearing more of my favorite skimpy tops out in public more often. This is Austin after all, and armpit hair on a woman shouldn’t be anything especially shocking anymore.
I will also be extending this to displaying my leg hair by wearing skirts and dresses in public as well. There is no reason at all I need to cover my body to keep other people from realizing that shaving is not actually a universal female activity anymore, and I am tired of having to wear too much clothing when it’s hot as Hades outside. So long as I and my husband agree that I am luscious just the way I am (which we do agree on), the opinion of anyone else on the matter means naught at all. Therefore, I am done giving a damn about societal expectations that human females should be as hairless as possible and done giving a damn if people get freaked out by the sight of fuzz on a woman’s body. They just need to get over it.
Humans have hair on their bodies for a reason. A couple reasons, actually. Also, it’s very nice not having to deal with razor burn, ingrown hairs, and stubble while trying to fight something my body naturally wants to do. And if you are a woman and have never felt a breeze on natural skin having a natural amount of hair, well … you are missing out on a wonderful little pleasure.
Good thing axillary hair is the last thing on one’s body to go gray; can’t be anywhere near as strange as 50-60 million American men sporting goat whiskers and earrings, cargo shorts, sandals, wraparounds and Leave-it-to-Beaver ballcaps, flexing their paunches as they waddle out of Walgreens with their 18-packs. If you take that perspective you avoid a lot of anticipatory self-consciousness, which seems to be hard-wired in so many women.
If you take that perspective you avoid a lot of anticipatory self-consciousness, which seems to be hard-wired in so many women.
This is pretty much my reasoning for just letting it all hang out these days. I’d have to work to look and dress as sloppy as most of the people I encounter out in the world. It amazes me how so many people dress –or don’t– to go out to eat, for example. Sure, I person can slum it at Denny’s, but at a steak house, you’d think something other than ragged jeans and flip flops would be in order … and maybe combing one’s hair. LOL!
I do agree with you on this of course. My only contention is that you do not like my facial hair. I have grown it out at the sacrifice of intimacy. I don’t think it’s fair. :) Just Saying.