To be or not to be… hairy?!

“I love your body.”

How often has someone said THAT to you?

If you’re lucky, a lover has (and you received it with grace and appreciation and belief).

But it’s not every day you hear if from a young shop assistant and not every day you hear it as an expression of admiration for your hairy arms and legs.

It happened to me in North Lombok in my first year here. I was in the local store in Made’s village, a place where tourists don’t really go.

A beautiful girl, younger than my daughter, said it to me, while she and her friends squeezed around me in the overstocked aisle and softly caressed the hairs on my forearm murmuring “Beautiful”.

And rather than being gracious – I was a bit gobsmacked!

I’ve since become used to it, more or less. Wherever I go in non-touristy areas where white people are still a novelty, local women stare at me. Made’s cousins and aunties are intrigued by me. Mostly it’s because I am so white (in their eyes), but often they also touch my shoulders and the hairs on my arms and legs.

Made convinced me some time ago that having a naturally hairy body is more attractive than shaving. It did take a lot of convincing, and now after two years, I still look at my hairy legs at times and silently shake my head. What a change for me. And I am slowly starting to believe they look ok. They certainly feel ok, and much smoother than prickly shaved skin!

I know I’m lucky to have blonde hairs. To be honest, I don’t know if I could be fuzzy if I had thicker black hairs. And isn’t that a sad and ridiculous truth.

Even though I was blessed with fine blonde hair, I started shaving when I was about 12 years old. And continued to do so for more than 36 long years!

I ask myself now, why on earth did I start shaving so young? I don’t know the answer.

I ask, why do we shave at all?

Perhaps it’s as simple as people being inherently averse to hairiness. Do we consider it akin to going backwards in evolution?

Is it simply that smoother skin looks and feels nicer?

Or is there more to it?

One source I read said women have removed the hair on their legs since cavemen times! Another said it only started in the 1920s with fashion changes… hmmm. Surprisingly there doesn’t seem a lot of clear information out there about this everyday topic.

It’s not just women. I think men aren’t really keen on having body hair either, particularly if it’s a forest spread right across their shoulders and their backs. And it seems these days more sportsmen are shaving or waxing their entire bodies more for aesthetic reasons than practical ones (but throughout history, it’s never been men that shave their legs and underarms as the norm).

Do we consider smooth skin = beautiful skin = sexy? Does it all come down to sex?

Or do we consider smooth skin = beautiful skin = loveable?

And let’s be honest, unless you were brought up by hippy or alternative people, you probably grew up with the idea that only ferals, hippies and lesbians have hairy legs, right?

So do we shave out of fear? Fear of what other people might label us?

Or did it emerge out of the capitalistic product-pushing advertising. “Buy this razor and be gone with unsightly, unhygienic underarm hair”? “Buy this hair removal cream and have a smooth luscious body just like Marilyn Monroe”? “Remove that unwanted body hair and never be embarrassed again?”

Did it emerge from a desire or need to look like the women in porn, or the women modelling our fashions, or our movie star idols? And is it perpetuated by the ongoing sexualisation of women’s bodies in all forms of media?

I did a google search for ‘hairy legged women’ and came up with only a few recent articles of beautiful celebrities and young fit bloggers sharing photos of their dark-haired hairy legs. Apart from their own personal reasons, their aims included the desire to inspire women to be natural. They wanted to promote and support self-love.

But, most of the responses to these ladies were along the lines of “OMG, it looks GROSS!!”

And I must admit, even though I admire the courage these ladies showed, and I absolutely agree with their message, my own conditioning is so great and so entrenched that when I saw their fuzzy masculine-looking shapely legs I cringed.

I am not proud of that.

And yet here in SE Asia, where people are naturally hairlessly beautiful, they seem to think differently. They don’t think being hairy is unattractive. Which is wonderful, yes?!

But, it’s not all good. Because, instead, they behave with the same sad human characteristic seen all around the world; they want what they don’t have.

Just like we grew up wanting curly hair if ours was boring and straight, or wanting straight hair if ours was annoyingly curly, and wanting to be taller or shorter or whatever it was that we weren’t, here they don’t like their smooth brown skin, they want to be white and hairy.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the saying goes, but is beauty ever really truly real when it’s so influenced by media, by human jealousy, insecurity and fears, and social conditioning, no matter what culture we live in?

And why is beauty the be-all and end-all of our desires. All the self-help books and social media memes and spiritual advices push the belief that we are all beautiful. They try to counter the overwhelming effects of mass media advertising. “We, are, all, beautiful.”

But why? Why the need to be beautiful. Why can’t we seek or just have, instead, comfort and contentment with our natural appearance. We don’t need to be beautiful, we just need to be ok with ourselves, and appreciate our appearances whether they are “beautiful” or not!

People and cultural habits are messy beings. Never mind hairy or not hairy, so much of what we do and think is unattractive.

These are big issues, and lots of people are trying to move beyond the pressures to conform to aesthetic norms, and the pettiness and destructiveness that go with them. But the amount of young people in western societies getting boob jobs, nose jobs, spray tans and facial tucks is increasing. In Asia and Africa you’d be hard pressed to find a facial moisturiser or make-up that doesn’t proudly advertise its Whitening qualities. And judging by the fact that blatant sexualisation of women’s bodies in the media continues, and that our societies continue to irresponsibly condition our young people in both deliberate and subconscious ways, I’d say ‘we’ as a people haven’t yet matured much at all.

Myself, I’m grateful for some maturity and wisdom, acceptance and letting go, that has come with getting older and having been through a bit of shit. I’m glad I’ve grown to appreciate my natural body (more than I ever did when I was younger and more ‘beautiful’). And I’m thankful for being with a man who is supportive and doesn’t give a hoot whether I shave my legs or not.

I don’t miss shaving them! Not one bit. I don’t miss the ridiculous amount of time and cost it takes to do it, I don’t miss the discomfort, and I don’t miss the painful and embarrassing ingrown hairs.

Besides, razors are very difficult to find here. (Most men pluck their scant beards – you’ll often see them sitting on a stool during siesta time, staring into a small mirror held in one hand, tweezers working away in the other.) And I haven’t seen any women’s razors for sale here.

And unlike Bali where on every street corner you’ll find a spa that offers waxing and threading for the tourists, here in North Lombok it’s impossible to find such a place.

I know all this because I tried hard to find a way to get rid of the jungle on my legs before coming back on one of my early visits to Australia 😜.

Last year I went back hairy. It took a bit of courage, I must admit, but in the end it actually felt so much more liberating than embarrassing 😍.

But still, as I sit here organising my trip to go to England next week for my beautiful daughter’s wedding, I am wondering again if I should, in fact, shave my hairy pegs.

36 years of conditioned shaving is sometimes still a hard habit to kick.

It’s still winter over there, most probably nobody will even see them, but I will be wearing a long dress on the day.

There’s others to think of.

And yet surely, surely, nobody cares.

The question is, do I? 🤔