One thing noticeable about my body is the presence of thick, dark, coarse hair. I look at myself in the shower or in the mirror and can see it clearly on my armpits, arms, legs, and face. The idea of removing my body hair has been a goal since childhood but, short of the laser hair removal I can’t afford, there isn’t much I can do.
I’ve struggled with my body hair my whole life, as an Indian girl in mostly white schools in Britain. When I was six years old, we had regular PE classes and our kit would include shorts. That meant that my bare legs were exposed and, therefore, my leg hair. During one lesson, on the way to the nearby field, a group of girls in my class began making fun of my leg hair. One girl came up to me and said, "Top tip: shave." She proceeded to touch my legs with her leg and mockingly say “hairy.” Once on the field, I started crying. I felt humiliated, embarrassed and, now thinking back, violated. My friends began consoling me and our teacher noticed. But I didn't find the courage to explain what was happening.
I wish this were the last time my hairy legs received an unwarranted comment at school. But I have lots of memories like this. During a typical assembly, I was in a school dress uniform which also revealed my bare legs. Every student sat down on mats, cross-legged. While the teachers were speaking, a girl in another year nearby looked at her friend and said, "She's got hairy legs." I immediately felt embarrassed again and tried to cover my legs by stretching my dress over them as much as possible.
I still can’t help but see it as one of my body's most unlikeable features.
Towards the later stages of my childhood, I was determined to shave regularly. My mother didn’t approve at first, but let me have my own razor. So began my shaving routine.
My facial hairs weren't the same level of thickness as my leg hairs. But my upper lip was, so I shaved off those hairs too. Later, I started dermaplaning my face (but that’s another story).
In secondary school, thankfully, my body hair didn't seem to be of much concern with my fellow students. But there was one instance when a classmate pointed out my slightly noticeable sideburn hairs during a math lesson. A friend next to me came to my defense and told me to say, “At least I've hit puberty.” That restored some confidence in me again. Still, during these years, whenever I had an event to attend and I was going to wear a dress, either I would cover up my hair or my mom would remind me to shave my armpits and legs.
Now, in adulthood, I find the shaving routine exhausting. Pair this with depressive episodes and it really ceases to be a routine. Whenever I dedicate time in the shower to shave my legs or more of my body, it takes around 20 minutes, the razor has too much hair caught in it to work smoothly, and I end up with razor cuts. In the summer, when the heat calls for looser clothing and shorts, I sometimes just continue wearing trousers instead of go through my whole shaving ordeal. I've tried plucking out each individual hair from my legs with a tweezer in hopes that it would at least make the hair grow back thinner. It has worked a little. But that, too, is time-consuming and tiring.
I try to cope with my insecurities through humor or glamorizing my body hair as a “garden” (as a Rupi Kaur poem puts it) or as a natural “coat” for winter. When I watched the Netflix series “Never Have I Ever, ” I felt validated by a plot point that focused on an Indian character’s facial hair, even though my self-esteem over my own body hair was at a low.
I'm happy for the women who can embrace their body hair, but I feel so much empathy for others who’ve been bullied for it, too. I still can’t help but see it as one of my body's most unlikeable features. I can forgive the bullying and offhand comments from classmates; we were young and it's been many years. But these childhood experiences have forever warped how I view my own body.
