Beauty
‘I’ve Stopped Shaving – I Love My Body Hair & My Husband Think It’s Sexy Too’
Three women share why they ditched the razor.
Since the lockdown, many people found themselves taking breaks from daily habits in order to conform to society’s standards, from wearing formal suits all day long to shaving body hairs and particularly shaving for women.
Caoilfhionn Hanton, a 23-year-old student from Waterford, Ireland, stops plucking her eyebrow.
Caoilfhionn realized that her unibrow was different from others and started plucking at the age of 11. She had all the kit as her mother was a beautician and people never really questioned her about it. It wasn’t until Greek-Cypriot-American model Sophia Hadjipanteli rose to popularity with her unique appearance.
At the age of 22, she stopped plucking the hair off. She’d received compliments, such as how she looked more “sophisticated” and European.
“I personally find hairy people really attractive. The person I’ve been dating for the past month also has a really luscious brow. The bigger, the better as far as I’m concerned,” she shared. Aside from being compared to Frida Kahlo, the woman hasn’t really received any negative comments because of her unibrow.
Natasha Collins-Daniel, a 37-year-old PR for a charity who works as a yoga teacher.
Natasha is married with two daughters, aged 7 and 4. She’s always shaved her whole life, but she still remembers vividly in 1999 when Julia Roberts made the headlines, showing slightly underarm hair while waving to the crowds, and the 14-year-old girl had “never seen underarm hair on a woman before.”
She remembered how it became a controversial subject with many negative comments sent towards the celebrity.
“Twenty-two years later, my own armpit hair is even darker than Julia’s, but it feels good to be finally following her example,” the woman shared.
She recalled that she didn’t have much body hair but decided to do it because her peers were doing the same thing and said, “Shaving felt like a rite of passage, a grown-up, womanly thing to do. While I stopped shaving my arms after a few goes, I kept up the leg shaving.”
“I also knew that James actually thought body hair was womanly and attractive – though he never asked me to stop shaving, and would never dream of commenting on what I should do to my body.”
Throughout her marriage, she continued using wax cream and would shave like it was the normal thing to do. Although, she remembers meeting a friend in 2011, Ruth, who “was fabulous” without shaving her hair.
“Suddenly, while rushing to jump in the shower one morning, removing body hair seemed like a huge waste of time. So I chucked my razor in the bin,” she recalls. “It felt great right away.”
She shares that her husband James was “happy” with her new look, and she continued, “I loved the feeling of the fresh air blowing through it when I walked outside in dresses or shorts.”
Shrewsbury photographer Vanessa Fairfax-Woods finally stopped shaving after 25 years of doing it.
She was only 10 when she got overly conscious over her dark hair because of her pale skin. Her mom, a 64-year-old old school feminist, tried to stop her from shaving. But Vanessa was adamant about it. She shared, “In some ways, shaving felt good, as it seemed grown-up to reach for the razor, and by 19, I was shaving my underarms and bikini line, too.”
“But it was like being on a hamster wheel. I always got an awful rash, and my hair grew back really quickly. I hated having even the tiniest bit of stubble, so I had to be on top of it all the time. It was relentless.”
Vanessa was also influenced by men who shared their preferences against natural bikini lines in magazines.
“Then, in 2018, I started a degree in photography at Falmouth University. Exploring the work of female artists capturing other women – many of whom had natural body hair and were gorgeous – really changed how I viewed the narrow beauty ideals that women are held to.”
“I questioned why I was putting myself under all that pressure to be hairless, but it was during the first lockdown in March 2020 that things really changed.”
It was still scary as, from time to time, she noticed people would take double looks at her body hair during the summer. She took her insecurities and mixed feelings on an Instagram post with pictures of her body hair and stayed a year with her body hair.
“It helped me realize that, while I loved my armpits, I didn’t like the hair on my legs. I gave myself a year of living with it before; in March this year, I decided to invest in a good epilator and used that on my legs.”
“I still love my fluffy armpits, and it’s a huge relief not to shave my bikini line, so I feel like I’ve found a happy balance that works for me.”
