Women and The Great War On Hair

When I will myself from the comfort of sleep each morning, the first thing I do is feel my face. I run my fingertips along the skin starting just below my ears. Both hands, on either side, I slide them lightly down along my jaw line. Very slowly, often back tracking. Until they meet. The ridges on my fingers catch and make a rough grating sound like sandpaper when I push against the grain. There is a grain because they are feeling hair. Thick, invasive hair that has grown, as it has always done, overnight. Black hair. Cactus needle-like hairs, with which I am at constant war. From which I shall never be totally free. I am 22 years old, not entirely unattractive but yes, overweight, and yes, female and yes, at war with body hair.

Please, dear reader, try to push past whatever your immediate reaction to female body hair may be. This is MY true horror story in grim detail. I did not choose to be a werewolf. I am not apologizing for bringing to light an untalked about, shamefully taboo subject. If you can't stomach the truth, than maybe you shouldn't be reading a blog. Just an idea.

To continue, there is a sound medical reason for my beardedness. My hairfulness. I have a condition called PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) that causes me to produce excess androgens like testosterone, which encourages the growth of facial hair. Yes, testosterone, the ultimate male hormone. Thanks. There are lots of other side effects like infrequent (in my case every 5 or 6 months) periods and weight gain and infertility and even insulin-resistance, but for me the facial hair is the most irritating.
Since puberty I’ve had to shave my face. Most women will grow a few stray hairs on their chin to pluck. For the lucky few of us who have more significant growth, it’s a lot of work. I grow copious amounts of hair all along my jaw line, under my chin, and above my lip. Yes, copious! If the hair was blonde, I would likely leave it be. But my dear, sweet, mostly German mother blessed me with black hair over every inch of my body including my face.
Returning to our narrative, I'll get up out of bed at that point and go to the bathroom. I’ll survey the night’s growth in the mirror. I shave at least twice a day to combat the ever re-growing army. After I have saved enough money I plan to begin electrolysis which will only need to be done every 3 months for a year, and then not at all ever again. Saving money isn't something I'm very good at, but I'm good at imagining things, so I imagine what it would be like if I went the opposite route. If I was just...hairy. If I lived in other times, I would just let it grow. I could be a bearded lady at a circus. Proper women whose hormones were in a typical balance, whose heritage made them naturally smooth and sleek, could look upon my hairiness in wonder. They would gasp, surely, they would wonder if I had a penis. Because only men can grow beards, of course. Except for women like me. And they would whisper to each other how “barbaric” I looked and wonder at my ability to drink from proper teacups and do simple arithmetic. An interesting fantasy, that. Alternately, if I were a wilderness woman living by myself in rugged country, my beard could keep me warm like an extra scarf. I ponder what it would be like to let it all grow out properly, uninterrupted by razor blades and burning hot wax and someday, electrolysis. How large would it grow? How thick? I picture the beards of mountain men superimposed on my own face. Paul Bunyan beards. Could it grow so proficiently that I would be able to tuck it in my coat? Would I someday be able to braid it? Would it be curly or straight? Can ANY part of me be straight? (har har, right?)
I have a lot of feelings about body hair. Because of my condition and my genetics I grow an extraordinary amount of it, not only on my face, but nearly everywhere. I constantly struggle with the idea of “bad hair.” Hair is bad the advertisers say, hair is unclean. Shave it all off! Every woman I have ever known says the same. But hair is only so horrifically bad on women, have you noticed this? On men, hair is strength, hair makes you rough and powerful and a bit dangerous. But hair on women is “freakish” is “unnatural” is “manly” is “grotesque.” And I look in the mirror every morning to greet this assault of adjectives. There it is, my hair. Unasked for. Growing. Currently, (due to my poverty) unstoppable. Sometimes, I hope that I could remove it simply by demoralizing it. Bad hair! Get off of me.
But as I was saying, I have a lot of body hair. My arms and knuckles have always been dark and hairy. So much so that kids teased me, that I wore long shirts, that I was deeply sensitive of it. And then of course the leg hair grew. The bikini line. My pubic hair. Armpit hair. And then the hair that falls into “other;” the hair trailing up to belly button – very faintly on me, but real. Hair in my ass crack. And the facial hair. Hair everywhere. Puberty had made of me a total horror, a freak of nature enslaved to the shaving razor. I was teased mercilessly until I began shaving. Then, too, I was teased but less than when I let it all grow. I gave up on shaving my arms about midway through junior high, but I still wear long sleeves shirts more often than not. Being a naturally hairy woman draws a lot of negative attention from everybody.
And I hate shaving. I run the razor briefly under water, and splash some water on my face as well. I rub a bit of soap there, just enough to ensure that I won’t have any burn or bumps. Shaving creams have the most obnoxiously strong scents, especially if they’re so close to your face like that. And it seems it takes an especially sharp razor to get it all off, down to the point where my skin is smooth once more. I nearly feel like a werewolf removing evidence of her condition.
I’m really truly torn, though. I can keep hating all the hair, keeping it shaved or plucked or waxed all over my body. I could do that and I would find acceptance from strangers, and praise from friends, and congratulations from sisters. Or I could accept my body as nature has provided it. I could look in the mirror and say, “you want to grow? Then grow.” It would. And I would know if it could be put in curlers or braided. And I could then never be hired by anyone but circuses. And those who were my friends while I groomed would no longer be such. My family would revile me, would chide me, and would denigrate me. Strangers would laugh at me, or mistake me for the other gender. And a very very few women would look at me and briefly feel free – because there is a woman who has hair too, and isn’t ashamed of it.
I have, in the past, let my pits and legs and pubic hair all grow as they willed. Will they did! I felt like a natural, hairy creature. Like at any moment I could return to the forest and frolic amidst the animals and bathe in a stream. But then summer would come, and the weather would demand I bear my legs. Eventually I’d wuss out and make my legs slick and shiny as they were before I became a proper woman, as smooth as though I didn’t have breasts. Pre-pubescent legs.
Obviously, as I wish to continue participating in this ridiculous parade called polite society, I’m forced to shave. My poor little ego can’t take children pointing and laughing at me. I can’t withstand a replay of those times in my childhood where I was scorned and laughed at for being so unbearably different. Even my partner has expressed her hatred of hair. But this essay is my weak little protest to the system. My fist shaking in the air and saying “THIS SHOULDN’T BE SO!” although it surely takes no notice. Why should I buy razor after razor to dull and throw into the ever-amassing American trash heap? Why should I be FORCED to pollute by society? Why can’t I love my body as it grows and is…why can’t others recognize that this too is a form of beauty? And simply others KNOWING that I GROW hair is somehow deeply shameful. Oh no! I have active hair follicles over which I have no control at all! Why should I be ashamed of even this? Why should I leave to grow the hair on top of my head but not the hair that grows on my legs or to the greatest extreme my face? Why?

Oh, why I ask? I know. Because if I do otherwise, I’ll be punished. And that’s all there is to it.