CARE FREE, NOT HAIR FREE
It is convenient that when I take this stand, I reside in a place that seldom sees my skin. For after numerous waxing inflicted injuries, including a severe third-degree burn, I have reached my limits of hair removal. Leading up to this day, I had become increasingly sceptical of such practices. Even second-guessing its need as I lay spread-eagled on a professional’s table whilst she painfully ripped my DNA from my crotch.
Why do we suffer to banish our body hair? Present for a greater physiological need, which we seem unable justify anymore, over the cost of our societies all-encompassing image of beauty.
We burn, pluck, rip and slice them off at their root, these poor helpless extensions of our integumentary system. We have even taken to exposing our tissues to a laser light to kill our skins appendages. Friends try to tell me how laser could change my life for the better. But hang on ladies. If burnt toast can give us cancer, couldn’t a laser? And like most things we initially thought were free of danger, time is a pretty vital factor in conclusive research and laser hasn’t been around for more than a couple of decades. Side effects aside, I don’t feel the need to kill my innocent hair follicles- seems a bit extreme.
It felt extreme rushing over to my suspicious neighbour’s house with legs bowed, to use their microwave. Fainting in the shower as I begged my roommate to inspect my bleeding southern regions. A Sri Lankan staph infection invading my body through a shaving cut portal. Covered in wax, crying in the shower of the Emergency Department after giving myself a third degree burn These are all real-life scenarios, caused by my extreme desire to be hair free.
I have been desperately eradicating these outcasts from my integumentary system since I was merely a teen. Yet there are no female role models within reach that are to blame for such an impression. So, who sold me my ticket to the perpetual hair removal train? Which culture propagated the notion that body hair is ugly? I have a bone to pick with them.
The train has exhausted me and I want to get off. I am done with the financial and physical cost- the ingrown hairs, wounds, bruises and burns. However, I am mostly done with the pressure. The dread felt when you know you will bear all but haven’t had time to rid yourself of the hair. I must admit, though I have committed to a future with more body hair, I have not gone cold turkey on my addiction. It is part of a greater necessary process. To realign how I view my own attractiveness.
By Lucy Sanderson Dyer
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