Hair removal is a personal choice for every woman, yet many choose to get rid of at least some of their body hair. According to one Veet and Stylist survey, 98% of women have removed their body hair at some point. Interestingly, 30% do it for their partners.
But this boyfriend gave his girlfriend a weird ultimatum. He demanded that she laser off all her body hair – yes, all, even her forearms. When she refused, he made it into an ultimatum: either she makes this “silly sacrifice” for him, or they break up. But his girlfriend made a decision he certainly wasn’t expecting.
Whether to remove body hair is every woman’s personal decision
Image credits: h***y_hippie_/ reddit (not the actual photo)
Yet, this woman was pressured by her boyfriend to laser it all off because he found it disgusting
Image credits: simonapilolla / envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: anon
Most commenters urged the woman to dump the man-child
Others, however, thought that her lack of grooming was gross: “You can have hair, just don’t resemble a gorilla”
Many women remove body hair in certain areas regularly, but only a few do it for their entire body
Most American women admit to removing some of their body hair at some point in their lives. Although they rarely remove all the hairs on their body like the boyfriend in this story requested, some do. In an online questionnaire by PureWow, 14% of the respondents admitted that they regularly remove all their body hair.
The most common area where women remove hair is their armpits (98%), with legs trailing closely behind (83%). When it comes to the pubic area, only 65% of the respondents claimed they remove hair regularly in that area.
There are different reasons why women bother with removing body hair at all. In a 2024 study, the respondents named cleanliness, comfort, and wanting to look good in a bikini as the most common reasons.
Still, for a lot of women, it’s about pleasing and looking more attractive to their partners, too. 62% of the respondents in the 2024 study admitted that they remove their pubic hair because they think their partner finds it attractive. At the same time, some women feel pressured, as 24.9% also admit they would feel judged by their partners if they didn’t remove their pubic hair.
Lasering body hair requires seriously weighing the pros and cons
Shaving or waxing off body hair is not the same as laser removal. After you shave or wax it off, it eventually grows back; the rate at which it grows back depends on the method used. However, laser removal is a lengthier and more arduous process.
What’s more, unlike what many people imagine, it’s not permanent. Lasering hair off requires several appointments, and the more and darker hairs the person has, the more appointments it takes. On average, clients see a 10% to 25% reduction in hair growth after their first treatment.
The average client needs about six to eight sessions to see the desired results. Again, that depends on which area is being targeted. For some, hair removal by laser lasts a few years; for some – a few months. Still, it’s not one-and-done; most people require maintenance visits if they want to keep their body hair at bay long term.
20th- and 21st-century marketing practices convinced women that body hair is unhygienic and shameful
How did we, as a society, arrive at a point where we wish to get rid of all our body hair? Hair is not something foreign to our bodies; it’s not something like a tumor that we need to have removed.
Yet, people practiced body hair removal even in ancient times. There is evidence that those who lived in ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire used seashells, beeswax, and other depilatory tools and substances. Back then, people associated hairlessness with cleanliness and class. The less hair you had, the wealthier you were, essentially. Women in the Middle Ages only plucked their facial hair; any hair on other parts of their bodies was considered feminine.
It was only by the early 20th century that hair on women was starting to be seen as unfeminine. Razor companies began to market their products toward women, emphasizing how removing hair was “a necessity.” Gillette’s first advert for its Milady Décolletée read: “A beautiful addition to Milady’s toilet table – and one that solves an embarrassing personal problem.” Then came Playboy in the ’50s and increasingly hairless women in pop culture.
Hairless bodies are marketed as cleaner and more hygienic, but Rebecca Herzig, author of “Plucked: A History of Hair Removal,” told CNN that it’s actually quite the opposite. “Those are ideas about cleanliness, contingent social norms, rather than about actually removing ‘dirt.’ Most hair removal practices tend to introduce new opportunities for abrasion and infection.”
After discussing it with family members, the woman made a decision
Image credits: Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Timur Weber / pexels (not the actual photo)
The boyfriend tried to get her back, but unsuccessfully
Image credits: anon
Commenters congratulated her on standing her ground: “You avoided a land mine”
