Some people are doing Veganuary, some are doing Dry January, but one particular trend that has caught our eye has been Januhairy. Women are all over social media expressing their choice to avoid shaving this month in solidarity of defying the social conditioning that makes women feel the need to remove every hair on their body that isn't a head hair, an eyelash or an eyebrow hair.
Fashion and Beauty on Female First
So why are women refusing to remove their body hair? Apart from the fact that it's uncomfortable, time-consuming and costly - why not? Rather than asking women why they no longer want to shave, we SHOULD be asking why they started in the first place.
Hair removal: A history
There are a few contradictions as to when people first decided to start removing their body hair. The writings of Seneca the Younger suggests it was common in ancient Rome for both men and women to depilate their legs and underarms, but according to Rebecca M. Herzig's book Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, attitudes with regards to hair and gender only came about in the 19th Century. Allegedly, it was Charles Darwin's comments on sexual selection and his suggestion that hair was linked to masculinity that propagated this obsession with hair removal.
Women tried to remove hair on their legs in all sorts of dangerous ways from radiation to quicklime, and it wasn't until the turn of the 20th Century that the first Gillette safety razor was patented. By 1915, women in the US and the UK were shaving their armpits en masse for no other reason than because that's what models looked like in fashion magazines.
What about hygiene?
It doesn't matter how hard you argue that shaving is the only hygienic option when it comes to armpit hair, there are several reasons why leaving it can actually be helpful. For a start, it reduces chafing during physical activity. It also wicks sweat away from the skin, helping ventilate that area and keep bacteria off the skin which then creates less odour and less chance of infection in hair follicles.
While you could argue that hair traps odour, you are then saying that more than half of men go around stinking of B.O., because body hair removal is less prevalent among males. According to Mintel, as of this year, 42% of the nation's males aged 16-24 remove their underarm hair, which admittedly is 26% higher than the statistic from 2016, but that's still nothing compared with 90% of females.
If having body hair was truly a hygiene problem, then it would be just as much of an issue for men not shaving as it is for women. But, alas, it seems if men ditch their razors, they're trend-setting. If women do it, they're disgusting.
But what will men think about it?
When you get past all the B.S. that people come out with about shaving "feeling nice" and being "more hygienic", eventually you're left with: "Men aren't attracted to hairy women".
Indeed, when you've got people like Piers Morgan, obviously the pinnacle of manhood, suggesting that a woman's worth is down to how attractive she is to the opposite sex, one can barely get through the day with the devastating thought that this charmer may not find one attractive should one ever be lucky enough to meet him.
If the sort of men that find body hair on women abominable are the same kind of men who ask intrusive questions about a women's sex life on morning television (not to mention extremely intelligent questions like, "Why don't you just grow a full beard?"), then I think these hairy women can cope with not being attractive to them.
Interestingly, there's a theory that hair in the armpit and pubic regions helps trap pheromones excreted by the body, which technically means people will be more attracted to you (unless, you're Piers Morgan, of course).
All things considered, it's down to adults to set a good example for young people that they don't have to do a thing with their bodies if they don't want to and that they can be beautiful no matter what personal grooming choices they make. People spend an awful lot of time and money worrying about and dealing with body issues such as hair maintenance; time and money that could be better spent focusing on other areas of your life.
Pain is a woman's game
Another reason why women are deciding against the removal of body hair is part of a growing protest against a culture of female pain. It seems the more pain a woman goes through, the more womanly she is considered.
Childbirth, period pains, ear piercing, high heels, tight jeans, tighter bras... Hair removal is just another painful experience that women are expected to go through in order to be seen as proper womanly. No matter how you go about it, there is no method that guarantees a painless experience for all women.
You've got the Devil of all hair-removal, waxing, which involves literally ripping the hairs out of your body with hot wax. Then you've got it's lesser demon comrade hair-removal cream which contains chemicals to literally break down the proteins at the base of the hairs, dissolving them and giving you an interesting burning sensation along the way.
There are tweezers which, granted, are only really good for the eyebrows, though epilators are the large-area equivalent given that both of them pluck out the hair from the root - like waxing, but slower.
And that brings us to the humble razor. Men will scoff at women who complain about nicking their legs with a razor, but that's not even the main issue. Razor burn and razor bumps can be excruciating, particularly in intimate areas like the bikini line and the armpits, where chafing is inevitable and little to no air can circulate.
It's about time women decided that enough is enough. It's up the individual whether they decide that going through the process of hair removal is worth it. If that's how you like your body, that's perfectly fine. But nobody has the right to tell another person that they are disgusting for avoiding uncomfortable cosmetic adjustments. Nobody. Not even Piers Morgan.