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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Zoe Williams

BuzzBallz, brat tenacity and hangover face: 25 things I learned about the world at Glastonbury 2025

Zoe and four younger women make Cs with their hands
Zoe Williams with Charli xcx fans at Glastonbury festival. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Shaving your armpits is very ageing

It was such a hot debate in the 90s, whether a feminist should shave her armpits. On the one hand, didn’t it speak of a profound unease in your own skin, the result of internalised patriarchal oppression, that you’d want to parade a hairlessness that everyone knew was fake, in order to satisfy a male gaze that fundamentally didn’t want to deal with the messy reality of you? And yet, on the other hand, wasn’t it so much neater and more feminine? Decisions, decisions. We argued a lot but shaved our pits anyway. Then the world moved on without us, and nobody does this any more. The worst thing is, if you’ve shaved your pits for long enough, they won’t grow back; like a metaphor for lost youth, made of hair.

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