‘Just shave it’: an attempt to understand our aversion to female underarm hair

A few days back, Nike were praised for their use of a female model who had underarm hair.

The ad appeared on Nike Women's Instagram grid and featured model Annahstasia Enuke. She's wearing one of the brand's sports bras and posing with her arms stretched above her head. She's got a bit of underarm hair going on, a safety pin earring, and a steely stare that both invites you in and tells you to back the fuck up. Essentially, she looks class. She is a model, after all. Most people either agreed with the above or decided that they really couldn't give a shit about what other people were or weren't doing with their body hair. Yeah, fair enough like, same. And yet there was the small but prominent group of people who appeared in comment sections of this site, other sites, and Nike's own Instagram to declare that they were, in fact, not a fan of the underarm hair or that it actually made them feel, somehow, unwell. https://www.instagram.com/p/BwpOoKrnr7v/ Yeah, that tiny whisper of hair there. As a particularly hairy individual who started shaving her legs at the tender age of eight, I understand where the ingrained incessant need to be hairless comes from. Growing up, most of us were presented with photo after photo of glossy, sleek, smooth celebrities who were either entirely airbrushed or Veet-ed to bits. That didn't matter though. What mattered was that we weren't smooth like them and that we had to be or else none of the boys would fancy us. We'd be, God forbid, undesirable.  Nobody ever told me so, but I guessed it to be true, and it took me a long time to stop worrying that the hair on my forearms was too dark or too noticeable. I prefer to be clean shaven in all aspects of my life (and on most parts of my body that lay beneath the neck), but over the years my dislike of bodily hair has waned and, during periods of time when I'm feeling particularly lazy, disappeared entirely. What used to be a strict routine of an entire full body shave every single time I took a shower has slowly but surely reduced itself to more of a 'I'll do it when I feel like it - or maybe not at all.' And whatever, that's my routine that's rarely spoken about because it's essentially uninteresting. After all, who really cares what hair women do or don't have on their bodies anymore, right? Apparently, they do though. So after a few full hours of scouring the internet, here's a comprehensive list of reasons (four) why some people seem to be so averse to female underarm hair. 1) People think it's unclean 2) People think it doesn't look good 3) People think it's too 'manly' 4) People don't know any different And it's number four that seems like the most logical explanation for all the "ew, gross" and "nearly vommed looking at that" responses. The idea that a woman can proudly display body hair, have fat rolls, be covered in acne, and still be, well, normal, is a relatively new one. It's not something that I was brought up knowing, nor is it something that I truly believed until I was well into my 20s. But it's easier to believe now, and to understand, when the media has expanded so far beyond the thin, white, hairless ideal. That can be beautiful, but so can lots of other things too. It makes sense then that a fair few people, women included, still haven't quite got there. When all we've known is that to be normal you need to shave your body, diet, wear certain clothes, do your makeup, style your hair a certain way, and act like you think you're supposed to act, of course your initial reaction to anything subverting the norm would be disgust. But when you think about it, why should it be? Most men boast a hairy underarm their entire lives and nobody bats an eyelid. Why should things be any different when a woman wants to do it? So if you don't want hairy pits, shave 'em. If you don't like looking at hairy pits, maybe ask yourself why.