#leghairdontcare
I was approached by this blog and asked to share so I thought I would. Here goes:
I stopped shaving the day after I was raped. I was raped by a man who I knew and was friends with. I spent months and months depressed by what happened to me, so much so that I had made a plan to end my life.
Enter radical feminism. I know that there’s a lot of hate and drama around radfem discourse, but it truly saved my life. It was a place I found that had women who were just like me. Who had been where I was. They were telling me it was alright to be angry. It was alright to stop performing femininity. It was then I stopped wearing makeup, wearing bras (I wear sports bras during the summer, sweatshirts or my flannel in the winter).
Anyhow, back to my legs. I have shaved, do shave occasionally. Though I am no longer embarrassed by my natural state. It’s given me a lot more strength. It’s also extended to other parts of my body where hair naturally grows. I don’t shave my armpits or my pubis. Things have stopped itching (from razor burn). It’s been awesome as far as how my body feels. Though I do often get asked by family if I shower (as if not shaving is somehow dirty) and an ex asked if I was going to start a forest fire!
Anyway, I’m glad to be part of this. Keep strong everyone! Much love!
41 days of not shaving anymore. I haven’t even seen let alone legitimately met another girl who is doing this in person yet. And the reactions from my best friend and my brother (people I’m closest to and thought I would get a more vivacious response from) have been lackluster at best… found this blog and just made a tumblr literally so I could follow it, cause I could really use some genuine enthusiasm and support right now . I was shaving every day from 10 years old until a little over a month ago (I’m 22 now) and I have never ever felt comfortable unshaved for even more than several hours when my legs would start to feel prickly again and catch on the material of my pants and stuff. I would feel so physically uncomfortable sometimes it would make me cry but shaving too often would too because I have super duper sensitive skin… perhaps that’s why the feeling of them being prickly has always seemed to bother me so much more than any other females I’ve ever met. The longest I had ever gone without shaving before this was 5 days when I was 14 in eighth grade and it was only because I was in bed with Swine Flu (lol). So I decided to stop doing this to try to see if I can get to a state where my legs are comfortable all the time (which is impossible when I’m shaving them because of how intensely them being prickly bothers me and how they become prickly within four hours of shaving so there’s barely anytime to even enjoy the soft feeling) and because I highly resent the fact that I am stuck now in a state of physical discomfort that is very hard for me to resolve for myself all because I was made to start changing how I am naturally or “normally” when I was a fricken little girl BECAUSE I was a girl. There is nothing that isn’t fucked up about that to me, to feel now like I had not been given the choice of growing up with leg hair and then as an adult deciding to shave it if I wanted to. I definitely do not feel like most of us or at least a lot more of us would choose to shave as adults if we were allowed to without judgment grow as children and teenagers without needing to modify our appearances because of our gender, because perhaps we would feel no need to, perhaps it would feel so comfortable and normal and attractive and feminine at our basal states to have the body hair we literally all have that no one or fewer people would want to… In my experience regarding shaving as a little girl I was totally being made to feel like it was a behavior that girls HAVE to learn how to do, a behavior as essentially feminine as learning how to put a tampon in. My mother was completely shaming of women who don’t shave one thing or another or even who haven’t shaved in a few days or a week, and she still is. And I’m honestly terrified for her to see me now that I stopped. And I’m still waiting for the time when it feels completely comfortable because I still have like really short prickly hairs all over in addition to the really furry parts now lol. But I guess ultimately I’m posting here because even if this was easy or silly for some people to start and stop doing whenever they felt like it (I envy you so much that’s so awesome) this is really really really hard for me. I feel like this is what a therapist would tell me to do to try to begin resolving my intrapersonal troubles that I trace back to both my relationship with my mother, and my probable obsessive compulsive amplification of my chronic pain and chronic physical discomfort. LOL so basically my point is that this feels really intense to me and it’s also very important to me. But friends and family wise I kind of feel alone in it… so I guess I’m saying all this cause I could really use some likeminded acquaintances right now. Thank you for reading.
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