What I Learned From Publicly Licking My Hairy Armpit

Today I’m going to talk about something that seems to be a big “no no” in America: women’s body hair! (Funny there’s actually a do it yourself hair removal device called a NoNo.) I’ll start with my body hair story…

Once upon a time, at about age 10 or 11 (around 12 years ago), all of my friends started shaving their legs. When you consider that I am half Hispanic and so many of my friends were blonde Caucasians, it probably isn’t surprising when I say that at that age (and probably still now) I had the most hair out of all of them. This made it even more embarrassing when I was the last of all of us to start shaving. My mom didn’t want me accidentally cutting myself, so she bought me a hair removal kit which consisted of a few little hair removal “gloves”. It was basically fine, pink sandpaper, wrapped in a circle so I could insert my hand and rub the hair away and make the bathroom smell like burnt hair. Eventually, I moved on from that to shaving. I started shaving my armpit hair (around age 14). The funny thing about that was, for being Cuban, I had about 3 very fine armpit hairs that looked quite pathetic compared to the bushy forests other people my age were trying hard to keep hidden and shaven. I must’ve gotten that from some ancestor on the Caucasian side of my family.  I shaved them anyway. No need to embarrass myself by keeping them there.

We shaved because we were taught from birth that that’s what was expected. We knew, because our mothers shaved, and  because of the increasingly pornographic sexualisation of our culture, that if we wanted to look beautiful, if we wanted to be feminine, we better rid ourselves of that unruly, manly, wild, body hair. I remember getting into my mom's stuff at age four and trying to shave my legs until my mom caught me. 

Within the past few years, it has been increasingly difficult to keep myself “de-haired”. This has less to do with laziness and more to do with the ingrown hairs that have attacked my skin like out-of-hand tree roots in the underground, cracking a smoothly-paved road, no matter what hair removal method I used. It was painful. And what I find worse, it left scars. Not to mention that when I shaved, I could step out of the shower and my goose-bumps had already pushed the hair out of my skin again. Forget five-o-clock shadow. Try, after a shower shadow. What was the point? Through all of this, I have felt like I couldn’t be beautiful. I was in a predicament. Either I chose to shave and still hide my body because my skin was embarrassingly damaged, or I chose not to shave and hide my body because I was gross and manly.

It wasn’t until a few months ago, when I was crying in the shower at how ugly I was, that I decided to throw down my razor and say a prayer. I asked God to either fix my problem, or show me that my body hair was beautiful despite what my brain-washed mind and the similar ones around me were telling me. Then I rebelled by not shaving my legs. A couple of times since then, I almost shaved. I had the razor in my hand about to shave. One time, I prayed in the shower for half-an-hour about whether I should shave. It was that big of a dilemma for me. I left the shower unshaven, but I ended up coming back to shave my armpits and the bottom few inches of my legs so I wouldn’t find any unwanted hairs peeking out from underneath my skinny jeans. That night, I picked up the Flu, Laryngitis, and a double eye infection from the pub I went to. That was followed a couple weeks later by a broken rib that cracked from my cough. I think it was punishment for shaving (jokes!).

I haven’t used a razor since. Not once. And, you know, I still have mixed feelings about it. It’s totally new to me. Anyone who has lived with me knows that I’ve never been one to be 100% smooth-skinned. However, I’ve never actually grown my body hair out to its full length before. When I thought of that, it was a bit of an epiphany. Wow. I didn’t even know what my body looked like with its natural hair, because I’d been so busy for over half of my life, attempting to live up to a modern standard of beauty that I didn’t even feel I had a right to reject.

As I was looking through wedding dresses online (and, no, I do not even have a boyfriend yet), it occurred to me that…*gasp*…would I shave for my wedding if it ever happened? Would I walk down the aisle with full confidence that my furry pits were beautiful enough to display publicly? As of yet, I still haven’t walked out in public for more than a few seconds bearing freely my armpits or my legs. I’m building up my courage for when the warmer weather comes. But when the sun hits my city…beware local citizens.

A few days ago, I thought it would be funny to get all duded up, and then take some photos of my head next to one of my raised arms to reveal my armpit hair. I took a series of selfies doing this, one of which was of me pretending to lick my armpit. My makeup looked pretty, and so did my hair…and then there were my armpits. Funny? I thought so. When I showed my 12-year-old sister my armpit hair over Skype and asked her how she liked it, she responded sassily, “Maybe you should shave your armpit hair.”

“Nuh-uh,” I said, “I like it. My armpits don’t get sticky. And it’s soft and beautiful.”

She gave me that “okay if you say so” face and replied, “Maybe you should dye it blue.”

I thought that was a good idea. I haven’t done it yet, but perhaps I will in future (more jokes! maybe…). It would give me and Cookie Monster something to connect about besides our love of cookies. So, you know, there would be that benefit too.

And here’s where I licked my armpit in public without actually stepping out in public. I posted a few of my selfies to Facebook. That’s right. I did it because I hate how people have come to view body hair on women and because I wanted to poke fun at selfies. Did I intend to ruffle a few feathers? Of course. Did I want attention? I confess, yes. But doesn’t everyone who posts anything to Facebook? When you post things to Facebook, you're showing things to people. Did my family members swoon? I don’t know. I haven’t talked to them about it yet. I received a mixture of positive and negative comments about my photos. Would I post them over again? Yes. Will I post other ones like it again? Currently, I don’t see the need to do something like that more than once. But I’m not making any promises. 

 Out of all the responses that I received either privately or directly on my photos, the ones that seemed to bother me the most were the ones that made the assumption that I was being “aggressive”. That I had just crossed the line. Why? What would happen if a man posted the same kind of photo? Would people even take him seriously? Maybe not. Would they tell him he was gross? Probably. But I don’t think they’d question his beauty as much seeing as armpit hair is more accepted on men in this part of the world. Would they say he was aggressive? Somehow I just don’t see people saying that. This is just a guess, though, as I don’t know anyone who has actually done that. But just from the fact that people expect males to act more uncouth than women, it would make sense to me that people might take a man posting the same kind of photo a little less offensively and less seriously.

Why was my photo considered aggressive? Is it because body hair has become way too associated with being a man, and manliness is so often associated with being aggressive? Is it that reason combined with the bold colors in the photo? Is it because, as a woman, I am expected to want to adhere to collective rules that tell me public armpit licking is gross and rude and so the fact that I did it is super disturbing? What? Is my whole life supposed to be an English tea party? Or is it that people just find that sort of thing disturbing in general? Is it aggressive in a way that was totally unbeknownst to me until now, that licking the sweat off of your own armpit hair just sexually turns the world on? That’s just gross. And does this say more about my own aggression in that sense or other people’s dirty minds? If it is sexual, I guess I was wrong about the whole body hair thing being a turn-off, and I don’t think I am.

Or is all of this really coming from the basic sheer fact that by pretending to lick my armpit and showing my friends list on Facebook, I was blatantly ignoring the Western world’s expectation that I would adhere to social rules of conduct that tell me to look beautiful and appealing to people?

I think the last reason is the one that makes the most sense to me and sums up a lot of the others. In our society, I feel that, as a woman, I am expected, above all else, to be physically beautiful. And, get this, it has to be according to external collective standards. It’s almost as if my lack of desire to do so is not even considered. It’s expected that I try. Like my body isn’t even my own any more. I think the fact that I put on makeup and then did something gross like showing my armpit hair and pretending to lick it appeared just disturbing and inappropriate to people because…why? I was apparently defiling my most important defining factor of worth in this society: my physical beauty. How dare I do that? How dare I make myself anything but a gorgeous spectacle according to your taste? How low of me. I should have more self-respect than to do that. How aggressive of me to make you so uncomfortable. I bet you almost died. I harmed the world with my aggressive arm-pit licking and caused a lot of near-death experiences.

You know what I think is more aggressive and rude than my photo? The fact that whenever someone has seen my hairy legs or armpits in person, they have said it was disgusting and told me to shave. You know what I think is less considerate and caring than ignoring social standards about body hair for women? Adhering to the American way of saying things you don’t mean like, “It’s so nice to see you,” when you really don’t give a dang that the person exists at all.

I thought that my pictures would be kind of funny. Apparently, armpit hair is an incredibly serious thing. More serious than the fact that people are dying all around the world for all sorts of avoidable reasons and the money and time we use to buy razors, and get waxing and laser jobs done could instead be donated to helping to save these people. Where are our priorities?

Connecting all of this to my insecurity about my body hair, the more I let my hair grow, the more I get used to it, and the more I see it as beautiful. When I don’t see it as beautiful, I try to force myself to see it outside what others will think and outside the cultural views I am living within. I used to really hate hair on men too, but now, as I come to accept my own hair more, I really don’t view male body hair as awfully either.

I do have to say, though, that despite my posted pictures, I’m still a bit nervous for the first time I venture to the beach in my swimsuit. I’ll have to be courageous. My armpit hair is actually not a lot compared to many, but I have a lot of leg hair. Regardless of my insecurities, it’s going public, and I will not be letting this feeling that I’m ugly linger inside my heart any longer. It doesn’t belong there. I am beautiful. My natural body is beautiful. I am literally an animal (we all are), and I like my fur. I am genetically closer to a monkey than a naked mole-rat. People are not going to tame my untamed animal body to ironically fit their perverted untamed images in their perverted, untamed minds. I am a grown woman, and I have body hair. Deal with it.

Also, I like this song:

"Real" by Plumb