I have a strange relationship with hair removal. I might shave my legs twice in a week and then not worry about it for weeks or possibly months. Perhaps I’ve had leg hair growing contests with co-workers in the past and perhaps I once had a roommate who was so disgusted by women having hairy legs, I wouldn’t shave for months and then point out the glorious, furry shaving mess before I cleaned up the shower.
Seriously dude, it’s a little hair. Grow up.
Also, who knew that some leg hair could step up passive aggressive behavior so effectively?
I suppose I was just embracing the offensiveness of my body. Cuz Yoda knows we get taught how offensive our bodies are from the time we’re little and adjusting to a world of pink razors and shaving cream that costs three times as much as the same product marketed at men gets old. Really old.
One of my favorite things about millennial women is how many of them seem to be bucking this beauty standard and playing the hair game however they want. Maybe they’re inspired not just by our European friends access to health care and education, but also their hairy pits. Maybe “Ok, Boomer” should be led with the showing of a hairy lady pit.
Insults would be thrown. Pearls would be clutched. Someone would worry about the children.
But again, all the beauty standards for women in America. At the end of the day, everything probably fits into two buckets: 1) Make us spend money or 2) Make us feel shitty about ourselves.
So again with my weird relationship with hair removal, I decided to spend some money on an epilator. As is typical, I decided to help Jeff Bezos buy another mansion. Figuring their was no way for this particular product to make me feel shitty about myself, I waited for the phone to ping that my delivery was less than 10 stops away. I hadn’t shaved my legs in weeks, so I figured it was a great time to give it a whirl.
Maybe I should back up a bit in case not everyone is familiar with an epilator. It’s a little device that pretty much looks like a standard electric razor for women would look like, only it actually rips the hair out like waxing does, so it lasts longer than shaving. Yes, I guess it sounds painful and such, but having experienced waxing and having sat in several tattoo parlor chairs, I wasn’t particularly worried about the pain factor.
And when the underpaid, underinsured Amazon fairy finally arrived, imagine my disappointment at finding out that I needed to charge it for 16 hours before its first use. My leg hair had stopped growing at this point, so really, what’s another day.
(Good thing to note if you ever find yourself in the previously aforementioned leg hair growing contest. Ladies, you can only grow so much. The boys will always win. They have the testosterone advantage. The contests with said boys is more about finding out who’s cool enough to hang.)
When the charge was completed and the time came, I did a breeze of the directions, just to make sure I wasn’t gonna do something to grow a third leg or get myself pregnant. Sounded easy enough—no pressure needed, just drag along the skin against the hair growth.
IF EVERYTHING IN LIFE WERE THIS EASY, I WOULD BE THE ONLY DEMOCRAT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT RIGHT NOW.
That was my first thought.
Then I actually started that no pressure journey and realized that the time in the tattoo parlor chairs was the right training for this mission. You see, the deal is that it does hurt, having those little hairs ripped from your legs. It does. But like a tattoo, you start to get a little numb to it and it begins to be relaxing. I’m not entirely sure what that says about me, but physical pain (nothing torturous) is relaxing. It reminds me I’m alive.
And I was in that happy little bit o’ pain cloud when I realized the epilator wasn’t necessarily being as effective as I wanted it to be. Which is when I realized that this device did, in fact, find a way to make me feel shitty about myself.
Apparently, my leg hair grows like my thought patterns, wildly and in numerous directions. Of course, using an epilator couldn’t be as easy as pulling the device against the hair growth. My hair was different, stubborn, and unpredictable.
This did make me feel shitty about myself. For a minute.
Because then I remembered that the hair is attached to me and there isn’t a damned thing wrong with being different, stubborn, or wild.
Or hairy.
Photo by Ignacio F. on Unsplash