Can We Please Be Honest About Why We Remove Our Body Hair?

Let’s stop perpetuating patriarchal narratives and just admit that the pressure is crushing

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

I have been experimenting with shaving — or rather, not shaving — for nearly seven years now.

For the last 25 years, I went through phases with the armpit hair. It was easy for me to start there. I’ve long found underarm hair to be wildly attractive, no matter the gender of the person sporting it.

But for the most part, I’ve found that men would not tolerate underarm hair. So throughout my thirties, I shaved them. Solely to make men happy.

By the time I was 43, however, I was done grooming myself in ways that centered men instead of myself. I let my armpit hair grow back out and never looked back.

I also used to keep my lady parts snatched. (Can you use that term for ladyscaping? Well, I just did.) It was a compromise, after almost every man I’d been intimate with complained that it was disgusting and unhygienic for women to have pubic hair. I wasn’t willing to shave or wax it (you try it, if you’re so keen on it!), so I figured keeping it super trimmed would appease current or future partners.

At 43, I was done with that, too, only tidying things up when and if I wanted.

And my legs. Oh my legs… That was a tough one.

I suppose I’m somewhat lucky. My thighs have always been pretty bald, with nothing but a bit of peach fuzz here and there. I’ve never had to shave them.

But I have dark, coarse hair from knees to ankles that is especially noticeable against my very pale skin. I’d never grown it out before the age of 43 and was shocked by how dark it was and how much there was of it.

And shocked that I did not like it.

That was the hardest part for me. I’ve generally found that I’ve liked my body hair — it’s men, and occasionally other women, who have found fault with it.

But I have to admit, I am not a fan of my leg hair. It makes me feel ugly, messy. Masculine.

Oooo, I hate saying that because none of that is reality — that is all cultural conditioning that has me by the nuts.

That just makes it so clear to me that we need more honest conversations about this.

And right now, I think we’re massively failing at that.

I’m so grateful for social media, where I can see other women like me. Other women taking the radical path of existing with body hair and not trying to hide it. Women with armpit hair and leg hair. Women with big bushes. Women with facial hair and unibrows. Women with chest hair.

Yes, all that is a reality for some women. Surprise! We are mammals and the vast majority of mammals have body hair, regardless of gender.

Only in patriarchal mythology are humans with two X chromosomes naturally hairless. And that narrative effectively inspires shame in women, since almost all women have body hair.

So what do we do? We happily remove it so we can conform to the pre-approved beauty standards for our gender. It’s a strategic move on patriarchy’s part.

Because of this, I still rarely see women with body hair in real life. So it gives me hope to see so many on social media.

The only problem is that it also highlights the pushback that still exists in American culture. The comment sections are abhorrent.

Men say things like:

“Shave those dead squirrels from under your arms.”

“I can smell you from here.”

“Real women aren’t meant to have body hair.”

“No man will fuck you looking like that.”

Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me. As I mentioned, most of my ex-partners made comments like that, and it just goes to illustrate how common it is for men to feel that they have the right to police women’s bodies, and how much they’ve been brainwashed to find pre-pubescent aesthetics attractive.

But it’s the comments from women that most trouble me, in this case.

“I would never do that. It’s not attractive or feminine.”

“I have to shave because my body hair makes me itchy.”

“I remove my hair because it’s cleaner and more hygienic.”

I would never judge a woman for removing any of her body hair, but I also won’t pass up any opportunity to point out cultural conditioning, especially when it is used to control women’s bodies.

As we’ve established, female mammals, for the most part, have body hair. And that being the case, it isn’t possible that body hair is antithetical to femininity.

The standards of femininity that we’re talking about are the ones our patriarchal culture defined. They are neither real nor realistic. So any woman who says female body hair isn’t attractive or feminine is simply revealing just how successfully she has been conditioned to invest in this propaganda.

Secondly, having body hair is not dirty or unhygienic. And frankly, this one particularly irks me, considering the fact that we only ever say this when we’re talking about women.

Have you ever heard anyone of any gender complain about a man being unclean or unhygienic because he has pubic or armpit hair? If that were even remotely true, men would be under an equal amount of pressure to shave. If that were true, we’d wrinkle our noses every time we had to stand near a man on the subway or in line at the post office.

I can’t believe I have to say this, but men having armpit hair does not mean all of them have body odor at any given moment. If they smell bad, it’s more likely the cause of being in need of a shower and a fresh application of deodorant. Those employing both on a regular basis don’t seem to have any problems with body odor.

So how is it possible that legions of women believe that having armpit hair is unhygienic? Do they really believe that showering and using deodorant can’t be similarly successful for a woman, whether she shaves her underarms or not?

Once again, that just proves how insanely successful cultural conditioning can be. The idea that female body hair, specifically, is unhygienic, was born from Gillette’s early marketing campaigns that forever altered female beauty standards. It’s not true. It’s not even logical. Yet, a century later, women still buy into it.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that having underarm hair doesn’t make you smell bad, nor does it make you dirty. In fact, I find that I smell much fresher these days than I did when I shaved regularly.

As for the comment about itching, which I see surprisingly frequently, I have to question that. I’ve found that following up those claims with more questions usually reveals that what women are talking about is the itchiness of the hair growing back, and their desire to keep removing it as regularly as possible in order to avoid that.

It’s very rare that I’ve encountered a woman who has actually experienced having all of her body hair fully grown out, which means they wouldn’t know whether or not body hair makes you itch.

I also can’t help but wonder if many women have simply talked themselves into experiences that they aren’t actually having in order to avoid the very real challenge of confronting the power that these beauty standards have over us. It’s much easier to convince ourselves that having leg hair makes us itch rather than dealing with the shame and pushback we’d get from others if we stopped shaving.

These are the things I believe we need to talk about. We need this kind of honesty when it comes to confronting the challenges of questioning beauty standards around hair removal.

No more nonsense about how it’s unhygienic. Or how all body hair is naturally itchy. Or that it’s just “not feminine” to have it.

Let’s be real and admit that it is a situation that makes us uncomfortable. That we don’t know what to do about it. That many of us don’t like these standards, but we don’t necessarily want to openly challenge them, either.

Because we’re not going to get anywhere while we’re holding on to these disingenuous narratives.

Last fall, I visited Bagby Hot Springs in Oregon with a friend of mine. It was surprisingly busy on that cold November day. We hadn’t even been in the tub for five minutes before two twenty-something women approached and asked if they could join us.

My friend welcomed them in, and when I looked up to smile at the one who was climbing into the tub next to me, I immediately noticed that her pubic hair was peeking out of her string bikini.

I was shocked — though in the best way possible. I remember thinking, We can do that? Is that in style now?

I’d spent my entire life being ashamed of my bush. It seemed that every boy in my middle school had a joke about how gross female pubic hair was. And as I mentioned, almost every man who saw me naked told me it disgusted him that I didn’t wax.

Further, fashion magazines and hair removal marketing had convinced me that even one errant pubic hair peeking out from my bathing suit was obscene, as if there was no difference between that and flashing my vulva to strangers on the beach.

So to see this young woman so casually walking around with half her bush on display, just existing in her body…I was thrilled. What a revelation.

I soon after noticed that she had armpit hair, as well, and I took every excuse I could to lift my arms and adjust my ponytail so she could see I was part of her tribe.

Interestingly, like me, she was not sporting leg hair that day. I wondered if she felt the same way I did. Maybe that was her least favorite of her body hair. Maybe she found her armpit hair beautiful and her bush beautiful, but not her leg hair.

I was dying to ask her, but of course, I would never talk about another woman’s grooming habits unless she brought it up first. Unlike most men, I have appropriate boundaries when it comes to talking about women’s bodies.

This is exactly the kind of conversation I want us to start having. We don’t have to have any agendas. I personally don’t care if women choose to shave or not. But I want us to talk about how cultural conditioning has affected our perception of ourselves, how it influences our grooming habits, and how we’ve learned to deprogram from some of it, but often not all of it.

We’re never going to find our north star in all of this if our only response to propaganda is to find ways to justify that propaganda.

It’s itchy. It’s unhygienic. It’s unfeminine.

No. The truth is, it’s hard. It’s scary to challenge the status quo, sometimes so much that it doesn’t feel worth it.

We need to be honest about that. And we need to give ourselves and each other grace for all the ways that we choose to compromise.

Because we all do. We don’t have the luxury of living in a world that allows us to exist just as we are — hairy and unbothered.

© Y.L. Wolfe 2026

Y.L. Wolfe is a writer and artist on a quest to wholeness in the transformative fires of middle age. You can find more of her work at ylwolfe.com.

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