Spending 5 minutes a week on my pits and 10 minutes once a month with a trimmer to keep my legs and bikini area from looking too scraggly sure beats the 20 minutes twice a week I used to spend shaving. Still, I know I am transgressing an important part the prescribed gender performance by not shaving — one that makes others far more uncomfortable than my having a boyish haircut and occasionally wearing more mannish clothes. One that makes many people more uncomfortable than knowing I’m gay or an avowed feminist. As a semi-socialized woman, I feel a certain amount of shame for causing others that discomfort, alongside the feeling of ugliness that is engendered by body hair in the media and in (my) family norms.

As for intending to “help”, what exactly in that condescending piece did you think I would find helpful? Where you presumed my being “threatened” by other women? Where you tell me that I should just suck it up and shave, without even considering (or asking) my reasons for choosing not to shave in the first place? Where you dismiss my point and say that it’s a point that “no one really cares about” despite the evidence in the comments?

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you were well intentioned. So take this advice: do not presume to tell women how to deal with our hardships, and do not presume to tell us what points are worth making. Because, no matter what your intentions, doing so is condescending, misogynist, and just plain rude.

It seems to me that you’re wasting a lot more energy worrying about this all of the time than it would take to just shave your armpits and feel better about yourself and be able to relax some everyday. If you don’t shave, sure, you’re transgressing the boundary and whatnot, but it’s not as if anyone’s going to see unshaven pits as a badge of honor of a brave and independent woman. Whether right or wrong, most folks will just consciously or subconsciously think that you need to take better care of your appearance (or some variant of this).

This clearly bothers you to an alarming extent, and it seems to me that you probably think that shaven pits are more attractive anyway, so my personal recommendation is just to shave and not worry about making a point that no one really cares about.

I recently stopped shaving again, after going back and forth with it for a few years. It has taken lots of talking to friends who had gone natural, lots of soul-searching, lots of general thinking and agonizing to get to the point where I can feel generally ok with going out of the house knowing that leg or armpit hair is showing.

I’m going to Korea within the next year, and I’m afraid of having to deal with an entirely new set of body norms for women. I’m a biracial Korean-White, so I’m kind of already outside many people’s comfort zones there, and since I inherited my dad’s hair genes, it’s REALLY obvious that I don’t shave (unlike my mom, who I swear doesn’t. grow. armpit. hair.)

Anyhow, it’s what I’m thinking about right now…

It’s damn hard to transgress against social norms, especially when it comes to feeling attractive.

It’s also become more difficult to me now that I’m in a corporate environment. Where I work women are able to get away with not wearing nylons in the summer because they have perfectly tanned and perfectly shaved legs. I have neither, so I’m stuck with the pantyhose. It’s been quite tempting to just shave it off so that I won’t have to wear the dreaded nylons, but I can’t give up after so many years of being stubborn.

That’s not to say the pressure’s not still there, though. Beau and I talk about it from time to time, and when asked whether he’d be embarrassed to be seen in public with an unshaven girlfriend (meaning legs and armpits), he said “probably,” although he was quick to add that his discomfort didn’t mean that I had to kowtow to it. And I can still remember, vividly, my father patting my sixth-grade on a hairy little thigh and suggesting that I shave before my best friend’s pool party, because I was never going to attract my crush’s attention with hairy legs. I was mortified, because my dad was practically suggesting that I was unattractive, and annoyed: I was determined to put off shaving as long as possible, fully buying into the “fact” that the sooner you started, the quicker and thicker the hair grew back.

It’s just one of those social standards that doesn’t really go away, no matter how much you ignore it. And yeah, it’s a bit ignorant of a guy to just loudly declare, “Well, I wouldn’t if I were you” — because you know what? You’re not me. You haven’t had to put up with this kind of social pressure. So just … stuff it, and be supportive of my choices instead of trying to take ownership of them.

I haven’t shaved either pits or legs (or trimmed anywhere) for a couple of weeks now (a month already?) and I keep looking at myself and saying “This is natural. This is how women are supposed to look.” I still have to say it, so I’m not cured yet.

Of course, I don’t really wear shorts (because of a deep-seated long-standing desire to avoid the male gaze as much as possible), but it’s getting to be summer, and the nephew will be visiting — which means the pool. I’m thinking about what I will do.

In any case: I concur on all counts, as usual. I’ve gotten the “but men shave too!” bit from Da Spouse (a while back) and I got really angry that he didn’t get how it was different. We live in a pretty liberal, progressive town, so we both know lots of women who don’t shave. He seemed to think that made a difference.

It does, but it doesn’t prevent the pervading culture elsewhere (i.e., where I grew up and was indoctrinated with the Beauty Myth) from being condemning of our hairy hippie friends. (ALSO: hairy women getting the designation “hippie”, which does happen here, isn’t necessarily better than “ugly”. It’s still Othering.)

Okay, done now. Thanks (as ever) for the thinking material.

I think it’s somewhat easier for me to make this choice because when I shaved? I had to shave every single day. That’s a lot of hassle.