Put The Razor Down…

I shaved my legs the other day.

Normal for most people I know [unless it’s winter] but before then I hadn’t shaved my legs in about 3 months. Truth be told, I’d forgotten what shaved legs felt like and what it is to have razor burn.

As previously [albeit briefly] mentioned I’m not big on the whole shaving thing. That’s not to say I’m going to stop anyone else from doing it [do your own thing] but personally, I like my armpits hairy. I call them my Wookies and they growl at me sometimes.

Why don’t I shave? Well it’s as simple as this: I don’t want to and don’t see why I should.

Shaving is nothing new, but it’s only recently [in the past 100 years or so] that it’s become something that everyone can do. I won’t go into a whole history lesson about it, as that’s another article for another time.

Today I want to focus on current events and armpits.

I started shaving my pits when I was 13 or 14 just because it was the thing that happened when you reached that certain age. I did it because everyone else did it and to not do it would have been weird. [Yes I am aware of how many times the words ‘do it’ occur in that sentence.]

I will admit that at this time in my life, if you had showed me a hairy pit I probably would have gone ‘ew’ but that’s because I was a. ignorant and b. lacked sensitivity. I also didn’t know there was a choice. Shaving was, for want of a better phrase, expected of us.

So I kept on shaving; buying a new pack of razors every so often, trying men’s razors as they were supposedly a closer shave, worrying that if I skipped a day people would notice the dreaded stubble and generally not thinking anymore of it. Shaving was just another part of life, like eating or washing my hair.

And life trundled on, as it does. I finished school, went to university, finished university, got a job, you know how it goes.

It was only a year or two ago [and please bear in mind that I’m 22 now] that I realised “hey, you know what, I’m bored of shaving!” It was also around this time that I attempted to read The Female Eunuch, successfully finished How To Be A Woman and thought more of myself as a feminist. [Is a pigeonhole forming here? Oh how clichéd!] Of course these books deal with female body hair and how you should let your beautiful tresses flow but honestly, until that point in my life I hadn’t thought about it.

It had never crossed my mind that I could leave the razor alone and let my hair grow.

Think of me what you will but here’s the reason I gave up shaving: Amanda Palmer.

“Oh no/yes!” I hear you cry depending on what you think of her. The plan was to grow my pits and dress up as her for a fancy dress party [which incidentally didn’t happen in the end]. However during my hair growing weeks I realised something: I didn’t miss shaving. I’d grown quite fond of my fuzz and decided to keep it.

image from here

That was in August last year and I lament that it took me so long to realise that I could have put down the razor long before then.

“But wait!” I hear you shout, “why shave your legs but not under your arms?! That sounds like some weird double standard to me!” Why? Because I felt like shaving my legs. It’s that simple.

If you want to get into the whole ‘sexytime’ bit of the argument, armpits are very rarely used to seduce whomever it is you’re seducing. They are [obviously] completely different parts of the body and it’s my choice on whether I shave them or not.

To sum up [because try as I might I feel as if I’ve rambled a bit]: my stance on shaving/not shaving is this: do what makes you happy. Do what you want, when you want to. Never feel pressured into doing something you have strong reservations about and/or straight up don’t want to do. And remember, a woman’s self worth is not determined by whether she picks up a razor or not.

About the writer: Daisy is an irregular photographer, wannabe writer and full time female. In between tea and toast breaks she spends far too much time on the internet blogging, tumbling and tweeting. She is unapologetic in her love of the Spice Girls.