This Is My “Girlhood”

my struggle with body hair

Ever since I was young I’ve been hyper-aware of my body. I can pinpoint the exact moment I started to get self-conscious of my arm hair; I was in my 6th-grade classroom, sitting next to a boy I had a slight crush on and noticed that his arms were devoid of any hair. If he did have any arm hair, it wasn't visible at first glance. My arm was next to his, and I could see the stark difference immediately. I then noticed that no one else around me had this problem, especially the other girls in my class.

Shame and embarrassment enveloped me like an uncomfortable hug, never letting go, even now. I still feel their presence when I get ready in the morning and I glance at myself in the mirror, reminding myself that the hair on my face and body is probably the first thing people notice. Since that moment in grade school, I wore long sleeves to cover up my arms, thankful that the school year ended just before it got too hot outside to continue wearing long sleeves without suspicion. My high school years were spent the same way: shamefully hiding myself and making sure I never let my sleeve slip down to reveal too much hair.

As you can imagine, my legs are the same way. I didn’t start shaving them until seventh grade. Another clear memory from the first night after shaving my legs clean is my mother telling me, “Now we just have to work on those eyebrows.” At the time, I was ecstatic. I sported a monobrow and never thought of ‘fixing’ it until people in my class started to make comments on it. I knew people would talk about it behind my back, but the absolute shock of being directly confronted about it really changed my perception of myself.

It was during recess, still in seventh grade. I was in a circle of classmates and we were talking about who remembers what and this girl, a sister of one of my classmates, stared at me and said, “You have a unibrow” and walked away. To her credit, she didn’t say it in a demeaning or mocking way, it was more matter-of-fact, like pointing out that my hair is dark brown. Still, I felt humiliated and stood frozen until one of my friends gave me a hug, rightfully thinking I was upset. Nothing was said after that, and no one brought it up.

But it never left my mind. Still to this day, I wonder what her intentions were in pointing that out. While it was true, it was one of those things that you just didn’t point out about someone. I was the only girl at my school with a unibrow. It wasn’t ‘societally acceptable’ (I knew a boy who also had one but surprise, no one batted an eye at that).

So when my mother made that comment I was happy. I was happy to be rid of the thing I believed that made my face unbearable to look at, the thing that made boys find me unattractive. My life would surely get better with two eyebrows instead of one, right?

It didn’t. In fact, my life pretty much revolved around making sure that the space between my two brows was cleanly shaven all the time, not a hair to be found. I naively thought that once the middle part was waxed, it would take a long time for it to grow back. Unfortunately for me, I was wrong. My hair grew back quickly. It was exhausting. There were a few times when I would shave off too much and look even more ridiculous, but thankfully my friends were too kind to ever say something about it.

I hope this doesn’t sound like I think I am the only woman to have hairy arms or bushy brows, especially at my school. When I was twelve I thought so, but it was only because the majority of the girls in my class had lighter arm hair that made it barely visible on their arms. I’m not trying to say that they didn’t also struggle with their body image, because society sucks. It makes girls and women ashamed to be living in their natural body, to accept that body hair is just as normal on girls as it is on boys. It’s just unfortunate that my body hair is really dark, and therefore very visible. In my head, I was the only girl to have arm hair. Retrospectively, I know that’s definitely not true.

I still shave in between my eyebrows once I see more growth there, and I do get them waxed every once in a while, but I have learned to leave them be. I have even received compliments on how thick my eyebrows are and a couple comments on how they wished they had thick eyebrows like me (they don’t). I think the biggest step forward from my younger years is constantly wearing t-shirts in public and to my university classes, letting my arm hair show and learning to not care what others think about it.

Honestly, I barely think about my arms when I am wearing clothes that reveal them. When I talk to my classmates they make no indication that the hair bothers them, at least none that I notice. It is very freeing and I wish I had started doing this a lot sooner.

A relatively new struggle I’ve been dealing with is the hair on my chin and neck area. I didn’t use to have visible hair there, but it manifested itself after making appointments for laser hair removal. I went to laser hair off of my arms, hands, stomach, legs, upper lip, and face area. I didn’t end up continuing this treatment because we couldn’t afford it anymore, and I think that may be the reason. This is called paradoxical hypertrichosis, when the hair grows in more thickness, coarseness, or a different colour in the treated areas. There are other possibilities as well like PCOS, hormone imbalances, etc., but it started happening after my laser hair removal appointments.

It is honestly even more exhausting taking care of this. I didn’t deal with it as much right after hair started growing there because that was when COVID-19 was still around; I had to wear masks to my university lectures, so it covered that part of my neck. But now, I have been going to my classes without it being shaved most of the time. At first, I shaved that area of my face very often. Now, I shave it maybe once a month. Probably more if I am up to it.

It really sucks because if I let it off for too long it genuinely looks like I have a neckbeard. Forget the arm hair, this new insecurity takes the cake. I am trying so hard to be kinder to myself, but when I’ve been told multiple times as a young girl that I look more like a man because of my body hair, I can’t help but now think that they’re right. Not that looking like a man is bad, but it is not what I’m going for. I know what society’s views are on how ‘men’ and ‘women’ should look like, and I am the direct antithesis of that. I’ve grown up thinking (and still, sometimes) that no one could genuinely find me beautiful because of it.

Despite thinking that I could never be loved — platonically or romantically — because of how I look, I have met such great and genuine people from adolescence to adulthood; people who I am still friends with from high school who never cared about the visible hair on my body, people I have met in my university years so far that never gave me judgemental vibes when talking to me. I’ve met people who have inspired me to be comfortable in my own skin; to not care about others’ perceptions of me, and to live my life how I want to.

I wish I could tell the confused little girl and the disconsolate teenager that people will love her for who she is. She will find people who don’t care about the hair on her arms or her face. I would tell her to wear the shirts she wants to and stop caring about what people will think about it.

And to my future self, I hope that I can learn to be kinder and to give myself some grace.