Histoire traumatique de mes poils

My body hair traumatic story

Today I want to talk about my body hair.

Overall, my relationship to my body hair has been very difficult for a long time. My mom wouldn’t allow me to wax until 13, and I was laughed at. In high school, I started removing them and became a control freak of my hair. It took me a crazy time and mental energy! Calculating, every time I went to my boyfriend’s house, if I was shaved well under my arms, waxed on my legs, the pubis smooth… I remember one day shaving in mall’s bathroom before going to my boyfriend’s house, a lonely moment when I saw myself from the outside and found it very sad to come to this.

My bristles on my stomach, small path between my navel and my pubis, have also always greatly complicated me. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wear a bathing suit in front of other people who weren’t my family if I hadn’t waxed them. I wanted to take them off with laser as soon as I would have had the money to do it. When I was 20, I made an appointment with a dermatologist to talk about it, who told me that because of my hormones and my PCOS, there were risks that if I took them off my stomach, my hair would grow back in another place, on my feet or in my lower back, for example. So I didn’t have them removed and I kept waxing them (and today I thank myself for not changing my body by laser at that time).

My bristles on the thighs, also gave me thread to twist. I refused to wax them for a long time, until it bothered me too much and I no longer tolerated remarks. At 14, a guy in my class walks behind me and says to his friend, « Hey, you saw Anaïs, she has hair on her thighs! » The same year, I tear off a big strip of skin at the level of the bikini with the epilator because I do not know how to use it and that I must quickly remove it before going to the pool at a friend’s place. At 15, my lover says to me, “If you love me, I don’t understand why you don’t want to take them off, do it for me!” Inevitably, I started waxing them some time later.

At 21, my longest and most toxic relationship ended. That relationship where my boyfriend wouldn’t have sex when I had too much hair on my legs. The same guy who kept asking me to dress up better, put on more makeup, or get a bit thiner (it would be more for the traumatic story of my fat but I’ll write it another time). Anyway, this super healthy guy who loved to decide what to do with my body. After four years, I was able to find myself again and relearn how to decide for myself, without the influence of another. I stopped wearing bras, and then a few months later, when winter was coming and I didn’t have a stable sexual partner or lover, it was good for me to let my leg hair grow without asking anyone’s opinion. And then you always know that when it’s cold and you’re wearing jeans and tights, you can miss it because you can’t see it. That winter, I had a few unplanned and hairy one-night stands and. No one made any remark. It gave me confidence.

At the beginning of spring 2019, it’s getting hot and I decide to go out in shorts on a Sunday afternoon in Paris, without waxing my legs (after a loooong thought). I feel the look on my hair on the subway. I discuss it with the friends I see that day. I explain to them that I cannot continue not waxing because I work in an insurance company where everyone is classy, beautiful, and where I can’t imagine arriving with furry legs. Sonia tells me that yes, I can try to follow through my gesture by going to work like that, and see how it goes. For the next six months, I went to work in dress and heels, and with hairy legs. It was exhilarating. I discovered that other than a few looks, no one was noticing me (other than my close colleagues who didn’t quite understand why I was doing this and who I engaged in the conversation about it). On the subway, I stopped seeing other people’s looks on my legs. I haven’t waxed my legs in the last three years.

That same year 2019, a female friend from business school told me: « Right now you’re really on top [physically] Viviche, there’s just one thing. Your mustache”. I would be lying if I said that I had never been commented on that before. My ex was laughing at me, her family was laughing at me, and some of the meanspirited people around me had already done that. I had always refused to touch it, I did not want a new disaster like my belly where over the years, a thin black path had turned into a real strip of thick hair. I don’t know why, this time, the remark had more impact. I went to buy wax strips, and my friend helped me clean this hairy area (actually a fine blond zone) that wasn’t allowed to be. It was “nice” for a few days, then I had pimples for several weeks and I never waxed this area again.

In the two years I’ve been traveling, I don’t wax my stomach, legs, moustache, armpits or pubic hair. A couple of scissors on those last two when it gets uncomfortable. It took me a while to get rid of the hair removal injunction because women must be hairless beings. Those many years of seeing hair, thinking hair, acting hair, and even judging the hair of others while I would dream of keeping mine have finally allowed me to free myself from this myth of the hairless woman. It’s extremely nice not to ask the question, not to pay attention to the looks or to be able to talk about it without it being heartbreaking. This is a real victory for me in my deconstruction, and now every time I see a woman with hair, I can’t help but think that she’s a badass. Because maybe she too has gone through years of deconstruction to come to terms with them.

There remains an area, only one, an irreducible small area on my body, where I keep my hair not because I don’t care, but by militant and political conviction. When I see myself in a mirror and I find myself too ugly, I take them off. I’m talking about my chin.

We all know that old lady who kisses you and it stings because she has hair on her chin. Spoiler alert: hair does not start to grow at 70 years old. At least not for me. I saw a lot of my friends remove their chin hair with tweezers, I did it myself and now do it with scissors, because an endocrinologist told me that the tweezers were going to grow more. The truth is I do not know, I have more and more growing with the years even when I do not touch them. Well, I wouldn’t say I have a beard, I would say a few long blond and brown hairs, a bit like the teenagers who are laughed at because they, on the other hand, don’t have a real beard yet. It’s a shame because if I had a real goatee at least, it would look like something. This is just a few trees in the middle of the desert.

In short, it still makes me uncomfortable with myself, but as I see very few mirrors on a daily basis, I do not often have the opportunity to remember this and I do not pay much attention to it. I know they are visible and seen, but I don’t usually get a comment from a lot of people. I keep these long, unsightly hairs on my chin because I’ve been told too much about what to do with my body. Because I have not chosen the criteria of beauty of this world and I want that a hairy female chin does not prevent to find someone beautiful, even to please, who knows. I keep them because I have more to do with my life than thinking about my hair. Because, when I have the strength, I refuse to let society decide once again what a woman’s face should look like. I’m a woman and I have hair on my chin, period.

I keep them but I hide them in the photos, or I don’t publish a photo where they are visible. I keep them but when I want to be «beautiful» for a day or a night, I cut them. I keep them, but I find them long, ugly, numerous. I keep them out of conviction.

Two days ago, Ludo, my lover, told me in confession mode that my chin hair was starting to bother him. Ah. I don’t get mad, but I feel the pain coming. He continues « but I don’t want you to take them off! I know why you keep them and I understand, I’m just telling you so we can talk about it.” Ah. I start crying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, just talk about it, bothering is maybe a little strong ».

But just talk about what exactly? After a moment of emotion, then another of reflection, comes one of explanation: what I hear, in this message, is « well, your hair there, I find it ugly, I will find you more beautiful without ». I don’t think that means much else. These hairs don’t bother him physically, they have no impact on him except visually. If they disturb him visually, I understand that he would prefer to see me without it. Even though he tells me that he doesn’t want me to remove them, isn’t that the best solution for him? I’m trying to understand why he made that comment to me, if not to cut them off. I want him to understand the impact a remark like that has on me. I want to say that this is not going to happen, but I know that for months or years, as soon as I want to please someone, I will tell myself that it is impossible if I do not remove these hairs. By his remark, he accentuates and perpetuates the injunction I am trying to release myself from. He has this power just with his words, because I find that even a rather deconstructed man who works daily on this issue finds my facial hair ugly. Even if he thinks that, I will never be able to please anyone else with this physical trait (it’s a little more complex than that in my head but that’s really what happens there). « But that’s not what I want, I’m telling you this because it’s unfair that you feel this way, I want to share the burden of injustice with you and find out how to help you! » Ludo hates injustice, and since we’ve known each other, he has tried with all his heart to do well, to deconstruct himself from injunctions, etc… I know that when he tells me that, he’s sincere and really wants to help me.

I explain to him that the best way to help me in a situation like this would be, I think, the following:
– Seeing how he feels: I don’t like the hair on my girlfriend’s face, I think it’s ugly.
– Asking himself why: am I influenced by a societal injunction? Would I find it ugly in a man? Is there an injunction on this physical trait for men too?
– Trying to deconstruct: feeding himself with other images of women with the same physical trait (I admit I have not seen many), learning to see it under a different eye, for example
– Not reminding me of this injunction by increasing a complex already present, or after having carried out the deconstruction work

Ludo understands what I am telling him. I do not know if he agrees, but he tells me that he will think about this exchange. This is the end of the conversation, but I know we will talk about it again.

I do not know if this is the right solution, or even if it is possible to get rid off some injunctions as they are anchored very deep .It sucks!

I don’t want to suffer anymore. It still affects me when a person I care deeply about makes that kind of comment to me because I haven’t yet deconstructed that injunction either, finally. Moving forward in this text and in my reflection at the same time, I realize that this work of deconstruction does not only concern Ludo, but also me. Perhaps this is an opportunity to work together, hand in hand, in love and benevolence, against things bigger than ourselves and yet ultimately so unfounded, in my opinion.

I would add to this text that we are all badass. Just to survive in a world that demands so much of us. Deconstructing the injunctions on our hair is not easy, and above all, not mandatory. I chose to fight against it, but you don’t have to do the same and that’s okay. Love yourself!

My body hair and I thank you for your reading 🙂