Reclaiming My Body Hair - Natalie Oganesyan

Natalie as a child, photo by Natalie Oganesyan

Words by Natalie Oganesyan, edited by Shayma Bakht

"Why are your arms so hairy?"

Variations of this question have been hurled at me throughout my life — while attending an Armenian elementary school, following me to America during high school, and beyond. These proclamations range in tone: from genuine curiosity to thinly veiled disgust. Sometimes, my male peers would change the question into a statement, as if they were doing me a favor in pointing out what has always been rooted under my skin. Just as their comments morphed and changed throughout the years, so did my reaction.

Confusion. Embarrassment. Shame. Anger.

I often wished to be completely hairless. At the very least, I wished for amber-colored arm and leg hair that wouldn’t grow back after three days of shaving. I remember crying at the age of seven when my mother said I was too young to shave. I yearned for the day she would let me. A day of maturity — of womanhood — that my mother, and her mother, and the mother before her experienced. A golden age of ingrown hairs and fleetingly soft skin. The blessed day arrived at age nine: I embarked on my journey of hair removal and self-loathing, only taking comfort in pithy sayings like “beauty requires sacrifice.” And with this, I internalized the ugliness that I was told my body intrinsically had, and I carried it with me like a burden to hide.

“Wax and destroy.”

Even now, I agonize over the decision to not wear jeans if my leg hair is longer than a short grain of rice. My mother’s seething glances at my hair — wordless, but clear — suggest it represents a lack of professionalism, or common decency. “There are guests,” she’d say.

I often say things like, “I won’t go swimming today because I don’t feel like it,” and “this has nothing to do with my hair,” when in truth, it does. The politics of body hair is one that is deeply rooted in a history of misogyny, othering, capitalism and infantilization. It constricts the complexities of femininity into a singular, rigid standard of gender performance for the male gaze, and is used as a tool to uphold white supremacy. To be hairless is to be desired and sexy. At the very least, society tells us it’s necessary self-grooming.

I spoke to Lisa Pecot-Hébert, a scholar who focuses on gender and body image. She argues that the concept of hairless women was constructed in 1915, when sleeveless dresses came into fashion. Two years later, in 1917, Gillette released the first razor campaign targeting women. Hairlessness became permanently tied to beauty and grooming — all for the sake of increasing profit and expanding a company’s consumer base.

Pecot-Hébert explains how hairlessness became attached to beauty norms in the early 20th century, “it was 100% a social construction that came from fashion, and from retailers. How that translates to women of color and to women today is that you feel pressure to be hairless because hairlessness equals femininity.”

Darwinian arguments that body hair indicates “primitive” inferiority racialized the natural phenomenon of body hair. In this evolutionary framework, body hair on women was not only associated with race — which is why some white women shave to distinguish themselves from ethnic immigrant women — but its growth also became falsely tied to deviance, insanity, increased criminality and sexuality.

In my experience, white women would cast disgusted glances towards my body hair before any man could. This was especially true when I transitioned into my first American school. A combination of culture shock and the perception of feeling othered pressured me to assimilate.

Women literally disfigure, damage and even fatally injure themselves to achieve hairlessness. Evolving from the use of rat poison cream in the early 20th century to the laser hair removal practices of today, these techniques can cause severe burns, scarring and irritation. The most ironic part is that these methods can also be unsanitary, which is almost laughable considering that hairlessness is mistaken as a sign of proper hygiene. Pecot-Hébert tells me, “[i]t goes beyond beauty ... people are looked at as unclean and therefore they are looked upon as almost lesser than.” She warns, “everything we do is personal because our bodies are personal. So, when someone judges you on a personal decision about your body [hair], and they make assumptions on your character. That's where things get dangerous.”

Laying next to one of my first flings in college, I noticed he was mindlessly stroking my arm. Everything was fine and harmless until I became painfully aware of the fact that I was hairier than him. I couldn’t stop noticing it, and I hated that it made me uncomfortable, even though he didn’t seem to mind. Regardless, I was on edge, waiting for him to say something, waiting for him to hurt me.

Cissexist, homophobic, capitalistic and Eurocentric ideals govern how women are supposed to present themselves and their bodies. These pressures force women into a prepackaged box, where defying the norm becomes a political — rather than personal — act. The decision to grow out hair can become an internal debate beyond just smooth legs and underarms — it means opening yourself up to ridicule and gaslighting.

My hope is that one day, I will look at my body hair and not see an exhausting dilemma that drains me at my core.

I wish I could say I feel fully at home in the forest on my skin, but self-acceptance is a river that ebbs and flows. Most days I think the hair on my legs gives them character, similar to how my brows shape my face. Then, there are those days where my relatives’ furtive, yet distinctively judgmental glances make me panic, as if I’ve done something egregiously wrong.

But then I remember that reclamation is a continual process, one that I hope will continue to flourish within myself and other female-identifying people.