Why I don't Shave!

Growing up, I was never considered a “normal kid”. I grew up alongside five siblings and four half siblings who are a bit older but were still around during my childhood. Six out of those nine siblings are boys. My family lived in the middle of nowhere on twenty-seven acres of land. There was one desktop computer in my house that we all shared, we didn’t have cable, and I didn’t get a cell phone until I was in sixth grade. My siblings and I spent most of our days riding four wheelers and golf carts, or playing outside in our giant tree house. Under most people’s standards, I didn’t have a “normal” childhood.

I was brought up alongside a bunch of boys, and in turn I always wanted to do “boy things”. I loved riding dirt bikes and playing sports; I was not one of those girls that enjoyed playing inside with dolls on a beautiful day (or any day for that matter). I hated dresses, I refused to wear a bra until my mother forcibly put one on me, and I wore boy shorts everywhere I went. For the most part, I felt like “one of the boys” even though I never really thought of it that way.

My older brothers all played football and I would always practice with them after school and go to their games. When I was finally old enough to play in a pewee football league, I asked my parents if I could join the team with my brother. Surprisingly, my mother said yes while my father said no. He claimed that football was too dangerous and I would get hurt. But why was it okay if my brothers got hurt and not me? It wasn’t until this moment that I realized my brothers and I were not on the same playing field (literally) because of gender. The reason I could not play football was simply because it was not socially acceptable for girls to play football.

When I was in middle school, I was sitting at recess with my friends when one of them asked me why I didn’t shave my legs. I was a little taken aback by their question and was unsure how to respond. They told me that I should shave my legs because we’re supposed to. We, of course, referring to all girls. I was very confused by this because, again, I grew up alongside a bunch of boys and I never experienced this. I started defending myself and asked why we were “supposed to”, but my pre-teenager friends didn’t have an answer; it was just how it was. So I went to the only woman I knew and trusted to give me a legitimate answer: my mother. I went home from school that day and pretty much laughingly told my mother that my friends told me I’m supposed to shave my legs. It was the exact same way I told my mother that people at school didn’t believe in Santa just a few years earlier, laughingly because they were obviously wrong. But to my surprise, my mother did not give me the answer I was expecting. She told me that in our culture girls are supposed to shave their legs, and went on to show me that she shaved her legs and so did my older sister. Although I still didn’t understand why it was the way it was at the time, I gave into the American cultural influence and began shaving my legs before my thirteenth birthday.

In ninth grade, I stopped shaving my legs as a joke. My high school soccer team made it to playoffs, so as a superstitious good luck charm we made a team pact that no one could shave their legs until we lost. We ended up making it to the first round of states, which lasted over a month long, so I was the only girl on the team that did not shave my legs during that time. I wasn’t thinking much of it at the time and I didn’t see the big issue in not shaving them. I kept this up for the rest of my high school career and pretty much became known as the girl who doesn’t shave her legs. For clarification, I did shave them every once in a while, but they would be pretty long and noticeable which drew people’s attention (my hair grows very fast). I am now a fourth year college student and it has been over a year and two months since I last shaved my legs. I wanted to see if I could make it a whole year without shaving them, and then once I did I realized that people in other countries, such as Italy, where I am studying abroad right now, actually don’t care about body hair like people in America do. So I decided not to shave them yet. Last semester a friend and I also decided to dye our armpit hair blue (and part of my leg hair) for a cross country meet; another not as subtle way to draw people’s attention.

I realized that by simply not shaving the hair that naturally grows on my legs, I was making a statement. I was telling the world around me that I was not going to conform to the bogus female expectations that have been put forth before me. Dying my body hair made this message even more transparent by strategically drawing attention to it, and making people look at it. I live with the idea that everyone is beautiful in their own way and it really doesn’t matter what you look like. I personally don’t care what people think of me. To an extent I obviously do, but if someone is going to judge me, make fun of me, or not want to be my friend because I have a little hair on my legs or I do not wear make-up than I honestly don’t want to be their friend anyway. What matters, for me at least, is how you act and if you’re genuinely a decent human being.

My interest in feminism, literally meaning the advocacy for equality of all sexes, heavily correlates to my involvement in the zero waste movement. The zero waste movement aims to reacquaint consumers with the amount of waste they produce and the impact of that waste on the environment. The feminist movement, in a similar manner, attracts individual attention towards social issues (as well as personal, political, and economic issues) and pushes for change. Both movements have begun to take off in countries all around the world and greatly encourage people to examine their own life and align their values and morals to their actions.

I was a feminist long before I heard the term feminist and long before I started my zero waste journey. The acquired feminist values from my childhood helped fuel my passion for taking care of the environment. And many of my feminist values align with common zero waste topics or solutions. I don’t shower as much as what is socially acceptable (my roommates frequently remind me), for example, but when I do shower I use a single bar of soap for both my body and hair. On occasion, I use separate shampoo and conditioner bars but normally a single bar will suffice. Normally women my age have a handful of plastic bottles full of products to clean distinct parts of their body, each claiming to be “soft”, “long lasting” or “strengthening”. I instead stick with unpackaged bars of soap so that I do not have to consume any unnecessary plastic, and I attempt to keep it vegan with natural ingredients, most of which I can pronounce (usually from Lush).

I was raised being told by society that body hair on females is unattractive and being different is a bad thing. Every time you turn on the TV you’re presented with commercials that portray hairless women with various hair removal options and beauty products. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over my years of societal skepticism, it’s to never stop asking why. Whenever I do something “weird” or not in line with what society deems normal, I am asked why I did it. Well, why not? Is what is considered normal the right thing to do or is it simply what everyone else is blindly doing? Forcing an individual to ask why challenges their beliefs and forces them to reevaluate their values. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that being different is a bad thing; being the same is boring. “The ones who think they are crazy enough to change the world, are the ones who do.” - Anonymous