Hair. I have it. You have it. Your mom has it. Your dad has it. Beyoncé has it. Hair is everywhere. Where everywhere? Literally everywhere. Look at yourself. Where have you got hair? Likely you’ve got it truly everywhere. On your head, sure, but look closer. Eyebrows, yes, eyelashes, yes, but cheeks, neck - you’ve got tiny fine hairs, invisible until the light hits them just right. And further down? Arms, stomach, legs, back, toes. The exact pattern might differ depending on age, race, gender, and genetics, but you all have it.
I’ll tell you right now, I’m Indian (hairier), sixteen (maybe at my hairiest), and I’m a girl. But when I look in the mirror and see hair – tiny, soft, dark, and absolutely everywhere – I start to spiral. Am I Chewbacca? A Werewolf? Worse still, a man? What’s wrong with me? But here’s the thing: I know I’m not alone. If you’re a person, man or woman, or anywhere in between or around, you probably have hair in all the same places, even if you don’t talk about it. I wonder about this constantly - how something so universal can feel so secret.
Before puberty, we were all mostly entirely hairless. Yes, I had a little bit of fuzz on my legs, but it was hardly noticeable unless you looked really hard in extreme sunlight. And I’m brown! I’m the hairiest example you could find. I am not trying to disparage brown people – this is a biological fact, we are all built like this, and it is not shameful. Once puberty strikes, however, the hair hits. Hair starts to grow more on the arms and the legs, but we also experience a sudden burst of pubic hair, as well as little hairs basically…everywhere. This is normal. This is natural. This is a sign that your growth is progressing in a healthy way – yet somehow, for women, we were expected to remain unchanged. To look the same way we did before puberty, just taller and a little more developed.
Everyone around me still looks, hairlessness-wise, like a prepubescent child. Hair? Nowhere but eyelashes, eyebrows, and the top of your head. Body type? Tiny and dainty. Voice? High-pitched, nothing too “masculine.” Skin? Smooth, unblemished, glowing like a baby. You have to be a child. So many of the beauty standards for grown women, particularly in Western culture, are built on preserving this infantilized version of femininity, and we don’t even think twice about it. These gender norms are so deeply ingrained in our minds that one might question their gender before questioning the aesthetic norm, leading to constant spirals such as the one I feel.
Men, on the other hand, must be tall, muscular, dominant, assertive, deep-voiced – and their hair is accepted, nay, encouraged. Given that all bodies share so many of the same natural characteristics, it feels more than a little strange that our binary beauty standards are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Men: dominant, mature. Women: submissive, childlike. I want to reiterate that I truly don’t think most people, or most men, are pedophiles or anything of that sort – it is simply the ages-old dynamic of strong man, weak woman that society seems to be comfortable with at the moment. Having these sorts of beauty standards doesn’t help anyone – even for men, being forced on the “hairier” end of the spectrum means that baldness or hair loss are deeply stigmatized and profited off by hair growth industries, even though these are just natural parts of growing older.
If we are all naturally hairy, when did the expectation of hairlessness even come into existence? In the early 1900s, Gillette introduced the first safety razor for women. Before that, body hair wasn’t stigmatized in the same way – it was just there. But Gillette needed a new market. So they created one. Ads started appearing that framed women’s underarm hair as “unsightly,” “unfeminine,” and something to be fixed. By the 1920s, leg hair joined the list, and by the 1940s, wartime fabric shortages meant shorter skirts and sleeveless dresses - aka, more skin to manage. The hair had to go. But this wasn’t about hygiene or even attraction. It was about capitalism. A manufactured insecurity sold back to women as necessity. And the wild part is that it worked. It didn’t just change fashion or beauty – it rewired the baseline.
Suddenly, hairlessness wasn’t a choice; it was default. If you had hair you were letting your femininity go, as if conforming to arbitrary and exclusive beauty standards define femininity and womanhood. This holds true for male beauty standards as well, but it feels like the beauty standards for men are somewhat modeled around the way actual men are, leaning into characteristics they already have, whereas the beauty standards for women require them to alter themselves entirely from their natural state. Beauty standards aren’t built around women; rather, women build themselves around beauty standards, which in turn feel like they’ve been built around little girls.
Hairlessness as a standard isn’t only tied to gender or capitalism – it is also affected, in my experience, by race. Historically, Western colonial powers used visible body hair as a way to mark people of color as “uncivilized” or “animalistic.” In 19th-century travel writings and colonial reports, South Asians, Middle Easterners, and Indigenous peoples were often described as “hirsute” or “hairy,” part of a broader narrative that painted them as less human, less refined, and in need of “civilizing”. The ideal of the hairless woman was not just feminine – it was white, European, and tied up with ideas of purity, cleanliness, and control. This means for many women of color, especially those with naturally thicker or darker body hair, hair removal carries an added weight. It’s not just about fitting a feminine ideal; it’s about proving you’re “acceptable” in a world that often treats your natural features as markers of otherness.
When I think about the body positivity movement, it feels like it’s mainly focused on body shape and skin color – and that’s great – but body hair? That’s been mostly left out of the conversation. I do appreciate Lourdes Leon (Madonna’s daughter), Julia Roberts, and other conventionally attractive white women who proudly embrace their natural body hair, often using their platforms as influencers, actresses, or supermodels to promote this conversation. But honestly, I feel too scared to do the same. On my screens, I rarely ever see women of color, particularly brown or Indian women, proudly displaying their natural hair, even feminists. And I understand – I adore womanhood and being my authentic self, but my hair feels so much more complicated than my brown skin or my ass. Hair isn’t just hair. It’s wrapped up in histories and expectations that make it harder to just say, “This is me, take it or leave it.”
So, I don’t really have an answer to the question that is body hair. I’m not trying to say that we should all throw away our razors tomorrow. I still shave. I still spiral. I do still look in the mirror and wonder if something’s wrong with me. So where does that leave us? If this is all built – manufactured – then why does it still feel so real? And if we’ve come this far in questioning beauty, gender, and power, why does something as small as body hair still hold so much weight? Why don’t we talk about it more? I don’t have answers; I just think these are questions worth asking. Hair is everywhere, and so is shame. And maybe if we start talking about it – really talking about it – it won’t feel so heavy anymore.
Sources:
Herzig, Rebecca. "Plucked: A History of Hair Removal." NYU Press, 2015.
Hope, Christine. “Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture.” Journal of American Culture, vol. 17, no. 1, 1994, pp. 93–100.
Said, Edward.Orientalism. Pantheon, 1978. (Also see colonial-era descriptions of racialized bodies in travel writing archives.)