Shaving and Body Image

I don’t shave.

When I first started not shaving it was more out of laziness than any kind of idealism. Shaving is annoying and I have better things to do with my time, the thought went, so why bother? It’s kind of crazy, in retrospect, that the choice to not modify one’s body to fit someone else’s standard of attractiveness can ever be considered “lazy.”

I went back and forth for a good few years; I’d go without shaving for months, mostly in the winter (because it didn’t matter if I wasn’t shaving when no one could see it), finally decide I was too hairy, shave, and then wonder what on earth the appeal of shaving had ever been. Gradually I realized the benefits of “going natural.” The hair on my legs was soft, with no stubble to rub my inner thighs enough to make them bleed. My underarms were less sweaty and smelled better. (That’s the natural function of underarm hair, after all. Hair is not icky or dirty–it helps keep you clean!) So when my last razor went dull I decided, this is it. I’m not giving my money to these people anymore. I feel happy, and I feel unashamed. The only annoying thing is that my legs get warmer in the summer, but I figure that if guys can deal with it, so can I.

When I got rid of razors for good, there wasn’t really a change in my actions; even when I shaved occasionally, I was still hairy most of the time, and when people saw me in public there was a good chance that I’d be hairy and not try to hide it. But there was a shift in the way I thought about it. As long as I shaved occasionally, I was still accepting society’s beauty standards as the norm; even if I didn’t follow them, I accepted that I should follow them. But this simple decision forced me to change my thinking. I was no longer neglecting basic grooming out of laziness–I was demanding that my body be accepted and admired for what i was instead of accepting society’s demand that I change myself.

I went through a similar paradigm shift as I became more immersed in fat acceptance. I started with the sort of pseudo-fat acceptance that still fits within the normal beauty standards, under which I was happy with my body “as it was” but also accepted the fact that I was too heavy and should probably lose 15 or 20 lbs. (this would still leave me in the “overweight” range, so it was still fat acceptant, right?), but that I wasn’t going to diet because I didn’t feel like counting calories. When I became a real believer in fat acceptance, my body didn’t change and my actions didn’t change, but my reasons for not dieting shifted from “I’m too lazy to count calories” to “there’s nothing wrong with my body and I’m going to demand respect for it the way it is.”

I don’t shave. I don’t pluck my eyebrows. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t diet. I wear skirts and tank tops. I wear clothing that shows off my arms, my hips, my butt, my thighs, even my stomach. And if you have a problem with it, that’s a problem with your perspective, not with my body.

Bellies Are Beautiful

I’ve been self-conscious of my belly ever since I started to gain weight, mostly because I’m paranoid about looking pregnant. I hate that society has this idea that the only legitimate reason for a woman to have a fat belly is pregnancy, and I hate that that idea still affects me so deeply even when I’m able to love the rest of my body.

But I just took a picture of my belly to submit to belliesarebeautiful.com, and just looking at the picture I feel better about my belly already. It’s a funny thing.