Growing up in the 1980s, all the teenage girls I knew shaved their legs and their armpits as soon as they could. I was 15 when I started. I borrowed one of Mum’s razors without her knowing and dry shaved my calves. I can still remember the beads of blood forming after I nicked the skin, and how surprised I was that the hair started growing back so quickly.
Amazingly, I didn’t meet a woman with visible underarm hair until I was backpacking across Europe in my late teens. I stayed in youth hostels where everyone seemed more confident than me about getting changed in the dorms, and many of my fellow travellers were surprised that I still shaved.
I stopped shaving my legs and armpits when I had children. I wasn’t intending to stop. Initially it was an act of laziness during the winter months but, when summer came around, I found I’d grown attached to the growth of wispy hairs. Now I wish that I’d never started shaving, because then my armpit hair would be thick and wiry instead of fluffy and thin. I like the feeling of having hair under my arms. I like the way it looks when I wear bathers. I like catching sight of it when I’m slopping around at home in a singlet and pyjama pants. And I like having the choice.
Women’s bodies have long been politicised in ways that men’s have not. And we can thank Gillette and the launch of an advertising campaign in 1915 urging women to remove unsightly hair from their bodies for helping to popularise the desire for hairless female skin.
Like all advertising campaigns, this was designed as a way to sell a product. In this case it was the first safety razor for women. The campaign promoted feminine hygiene, claiming that underarm hair was unhygienic, and so we began removing it. That spread during wartime to include the removal of leg hair because of the shortage of nylons and, later, as clothes became more revealing, women were expected to remove more and more hair, until most of us had elected to follow a regime of hairlessness.
Not long ago I was sitting on the sidelines of a large inner-city netball centre watching my daughter’s team, who have played together on and off for years. All in their early 20s, they play weekly for fun, more as a way to catch-up than anything competitive, although they happily celebrate a win.
As I was watching and chatting to some of my daughter’s teammates, I heard that a formal complaint had been made against them earlier in the season because an opposition player had taken offence to the goal keeper’s underarm hair. The players all wear those sleeveless, slim-fitting netball dresses and apparently the sight of the underarm hair was deemed “disgusting”. The opposition argued it was a uniform violation and that players should all be made to remove their underarm hair.
The complaint wasn’t taken too seriously by the league, so no action came of it, but the fact that the opposition made their feelings known during the game meant the player in question was aware of what was being said. Surely the point of playing sport is not to police other people for their physical choices? Some players have tattoos, some have shaved heads, some wear long ponytails and some dye the hair. Provided they are playing by the rules of the code, does it matter if they don’t shave under their arms?
Many of the young adults I know don’t shave their body hair any more. Many of them never started. They don’t shave because they don’t want to. Their reasons are not important but what is important is that they are entitled to enjoy sport without anyone complaining about the sight and smell of their body.
Body hair for women has always been a controversial subject, and one that seems to encourage others to have an opinion. How many times have we seen female celebrities derided in magazines for flashing a hairy armpit? There are entire industries established to make money from removing our hair and making our skin as smooth as a child’s.
I know many women would still prefer to remove visible body hair, and that is their choice. But others do not. And at a time when women’s bodies are once again at risk of being controlled by those who do not occupy them, we must preserve the rights of women to make decisions that , frankly, have nothing to do with anyone else.
• Nova Weetman is an award-winning children’s author. Her memoir, Love, Death & Other Scenes, is published by UQP
