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[rosaspicypaper]

I wasn't even ten when my mother taught me to shave. It was exciting. I felt grown up. She explained to me, gently, that I would have a lot to get rid of for the rest of my life. We just had a lot of body hair, more than average. So, there I remember being a little girl, taking a blade to my skin every time I had to shower. A family hardly able to afford food for the week, but we still prioritized a razor for a child in the fifth grade. It grew everywhere, even thick and dark on my thighs. I took it all away, sometimes spending 15 minutes double checking myself to make sure I got every last one. And then, if I found I didn't once had I dried off, I'd get back in and finish the job, or do it dry to ensure I got it all, razor burn preferable to hair. It didn't stop there. I wasn't stupid. I knew the legs weren't the only place you didn't want to have body hair. Once I felt I had the hang of it, I started to shave my armpits. My belly. My chest. My pubic area. My arms. And, as a courtesy of the bones in my wrist, I eventually took out a chunk of flesh so deep and wide you can still see the scar over a decade later. My mom understood. She bandaged me up, and I maintained my routine. Middle school was harder. I kept it up, but kids saw through it. They called me a dog. I had to get rid of even more, I determined. Shaving my chest and my belly turned into waxing. I became self conscious of the dark hair on my cheeks and my jaw, my upper lip and what lay outside of an ideal brow shape. I ripped it all away, checking twice daily for hair I missed, and if I found any I had a pair of tweezers to help finish the job. I was, of course, introduced to the idea floating around online that women didn't have to remove their body hair. I agreed, I thought, that women could do whatever they wanted with their body hair! And if that was the case, I'd choose to keep getting rid of mine. We've all heard the same excuse parrotted around: "I just like the way it feels." And I did. Of course I did. I was used to the smooth skin and that baby soft feel, the validation and admiration that came with having a perfect, hairless...everything. I was okay with other women making the choice to have it because their choice wasn't going to make me feel otherly. I never genuinely understood how miserable it was to maintain the routine until my sophomore year of high school. It had become as second nature to me as brushing my teeth or washing my hair. But, I chose to stop shaving. Over the years, I would cave to the misery and get rid of it all over again, but eventually I'd let it grow out, and it was uncomfortable. It was scary. The prickling hair drove me crazy, the sandy feel of my legs making me squirm once it had grown out. I loathed putting lotion on. It felt like I had to use half the bottle just to get to my legs. Jeans in the summer until I couldn't stand it anymore, friends that flushed with embarrassment when we'd go to the pool. A mother pleading me to do it again, "for me". Struggling to find products that would work for me because women's hygiene isn't formulated with women's natural selves in mind... by now, I don't think I've shaved in over 4 years, and I certainly don't feel so otherly anymore. Was it the easy choice? Was it the comfortable one? Not at all, but I feel as though it was the necessary one.