I have PCOS, and with PCOS comes an abundance of body hair.
It's snuggly. It's cozy. It's thick, sturdy, incredibly committed to growing back. And oh so unacceptable by Western beauty standards.
I learned pretty early that body hair was something I was supposed to be ashamed of, to hide it, to remove it.
A feminine body is supposed to be smooth. Cleanly shaven. Soft. Hairless.
And I tried.
I waxed. My hair is so thick that waxing regularly left me bleeding, burned and covered in rashes. I was told that waxing would leave me smooth for weeks. My hair was back after one.
I shaved my armpits every day. The hair would be back a few hours later, while the shaving itself left me with spots and irritated skin.
And yet I kept doing it.
Because the alternative was letting people see how much body hair I actually have and be judged for it. And people did (and still do) judge me for it.
My hair isn't the cute, barely visible kind we're sometimes allowed to call "natural." It's dark. It's thick. If I leave certain areas alone, it will make its way through my underwear or shorts and be very visible.
For years, I hurt myself trying to make my body hair look like I thought body hair should look on a woman. To conform to an image of prescribed femininity.
I reached a point where I just gave up.
My skin was tired. I was tired. And I was especially tired of how much mental space something as completely ordinary as hair was taking up.
It's natural and it just grows.
I don't control it. I didn't choose it. My body isn't doing something wrong by producing it. Hair grows on human bodies. At some point we collectively decided that hair growing in certain places on certain bodies was undesirable, unfeminine, dirty or embarrassing.
And I had been physically hurting myself to obey that idea.
So I decided accepting my body hair might actually be easier than spending the rest of my life fighting it.
I started with my armpits. And I started with affirmations.
I told myself my armpit hair was okay. Then that it was natural. Then that there was nothing unfeminine about it. Slowly, I stopped seeing it as something ugly, unnatural.
Now, so many years later, I love my armpit hair. I genuinely feel a little naked without it.
Yet I did not throw away my razor, I did not yet embrace every hair on my body and reach some magical final stage of body acceptance.
I still struggle with my leg hair. I struggle with the hair on my chin and my moustache. When they're visible, there is still a part of me that immediately feels less feminine. That old voice is still there, telling me that this hair is different. This hair needs to go.
I hope that one day I won't care. I don't think acceptance has to mean loving every single thing about your body or never changing anything about it. For me, it's learning that I don't have to hate it.
My body grows hair. A lot of it. And I'm trying to give that hair a place on my body without immediately treating it as a problem.
Small steps.
