My relationship with body hair in Lockdown 2.0

I am the hairiest cisgendered South Asian woman I know. It’s a bold statement to make as an Indian but my friends, ex-boyfriends and secondary school bullies will vouch for me – it’s something I spent much of my teens and early twenties battling with, which meant dabbling in practically every hair removal method available – shaving, waxing, threading, laser (which, can I say, could also be a viable option for corporal punishment), epilating, hair removal cream – the lot. Over time and with a bunch of unlearning, I’ve learnt to embrace it, even if in part; heavy brows, coarse arm hair – you know, the fairly cute, socially acceptable stuff, but when the first lockdown showed up in Spring, it presented me the opportunity to take a hair removal hiatus. The hiatus began out of laziness, progressed out of curiosity and then stayed around a bit longer because, my newly-grown body hair made me feel edgy and badass as hell. Now with Lockdown 2.0 in full swing, I thought I’d share my experience. Here’s what I learnt: 

Hair is a big part of our identity.

Why? Because hair is as personal as it is public. It’s a social cue in itself with the ability to convey elaborate messages about a person’s beliefs, lifestyles and commitments – and all in a very short space of time. Of course we’re complex, unique beings who go beyond the stereotypes of our hairstyles but historically, politically, socially and in the context of religion and culture, hair has repeatedly played a significant role in communicating messages about who we are.

The ability to choose and change that message – whether to conform or resist norms – to communicate it through the mode of expression that is our hair and our grooming rituals feels pretty damn profound. As a teen, my journey to attaining bliss in the form of being hairless from the lashes down was determined by a pressure to conform to an ideal, almost fifteen years later not only has my identity evolved, I’d like to think I also use body hair to convey a message of defying social norms.

Our idea of ‘natural’ is actually pretty unnatural when it comes to body hair.

On the surface, we assume hair to be a natural physiological phenomenon – it mostly serves to regulate our body temperature and protect our organs. The rest of our downy, vellus hair can be assumed to be an evolutionary relic – yes, we don’t need it anymore but it’s also not doing any harm; just nature doin’ its thang, so why do we find ourselves cringing at the sight of it? Social conditioning.

Just like our body hair, our expectation of what is natural has been groomed to the point of being unrecognisable. Our western, phallocentric society’s idea of ‘natural body hair’ basically means being ‘bald from the eyebrows down’, and that has been reinforced deeply and broadly, on a conscious and a subconscious level. Capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy, reinforced by the media, literature and porn, internalised and projected by us and our peers has led to a skewing of our understanding of what it is to be natural that we’re so out of touch with what is natural. I’ve learnt it’s important to dig deep, rummage through the conditioning, examine where our internalised beliefs are coming from, only then we can unlearn and progress with, frankly, more important things. 

Society denies women of their femininity in many ways, for South Asians it’s often through their body hair.

Our phallocentric society also has a narrow list of criteria which deems qualities feminine or masculine, and traditionally, body hair has been related to male appearance, health and hegemonic masculinity – for it and to be visible on a woman, goes against the archetypes of what it means to be feminine.

For South Asian women, as Simran Randhawa mentions in an article discussing pubic hair – the issue of having our femininity robbed from us, is compounded by the fact that our hair is often dark, coarse and prominent – it can be seen – a stark contrast to the body hair that is celebrated by mainstream feminism today.

Even the language we use as women to describe the body parts typically associated with male body hair attempts to de-emphasise the masculine association – I find myself opting for the term ‘underarm’ instead of ‘armpit’, ‘upper-lip’ instead of ‘moustache’, maybe an unconscious attempt to feminise these parts of our body to seem more delicate than if they were described on a man.

Turns out though, that femininity and body hair aren’t mutually exclusive (who would have known!), and that it feels important to unpack our understanding of what is masculine and feminine – a rigid dichotomy that feels vastly outdated. 

It’s ok not to love it all.

Not gonna lie, I don’t love all my body hair, but growing it out only reinforced that it isn’t a heightened experience, but instead something which has brought about a sense of neutrality. It doesn’t really matter whether I love it or not, it’s natural – and what I choose to do with it is then my decision.

I also realise that we still live in a society bound by norms and beliefs – we don’t exist in a vacuum void from of judgement or expectation, and sometimes it takes a bit of conforming to introduce new norms – whip out the leg hair today, whack out yer hair-laden armpits tomorrow. Any progress is good progress.

So, to answer the question of whether natural is the new normal, I’ll be honest, I don’t think natural intends on becoming the new normal any time soon but if we can start to deconstruct our prickly relationship with body hair – be it our own, or that of someone else, maybe that’ll help us to understand and make peace with it. Maybe then someday we won’t be so quick to bend over backwards for the epilator, quite literally.