Getting my pits out

Refreshingly repulsive: Elizabeth Pugsley grows out her body hair…

In mid-October, I decided to stop shaving my armpits.

Admittedly, yes, this decision was partly because I couldn’t afford to buy any razors – but, mainly, I was fed up of feeling constrained by my own body. Necking two paracetamol and attempting to epilate, only to feel even more disgusting when the hairs were replaced by angry red lumps meant that removing my hair was becoming an inconvenience. Goddamn it, I thought. They’re my bloody armpits, and ain’t no balding white man in a suit gonna tell me that his wrinkly old pits are more acceptable than mine.

They say your hair develops in cycles; well, so did I. The first few weeks were fuelled by unadulterated hatred. Hatred, itchiness, and anger. Everywhere I went, my armpits itched. I scratched until I was left with crops of sore stubbly patches where I was expecting downy, soft hair to grow. I raged at the sky (probably thinking it would pass on my message to mother nature) at how I could be damned to have such spikey armpit hair – the internet had promised me flowing locks like a horses mane that would sprout from my pits so quickly I could plait it.

After about three weeks of suffering, I began to feel liberated. Not quite liberated enough to stop wearing bras – that confidence came at about week 6. My logic was that the hair distracted you from my nips (friends told me otherwise), but I was bathing in my natural femininity – and, as my flatmate later notified me, wafts of my own BO. It turns out, perhaps a little worryingly, that you do need to wash your armpits a little more when your sweat decides to make friends with resident tufts of hair. After another week of scrubbing, however, my body did seem to regulate itself and the smell went almost completely. I felt able to embrace myself. I felt free, and quietly confident that I had something personal hidden underneath my own arms – effectively a (stink) bomb smuggled under my shirt.

When my hair had grown long enough to feel full, I reached the final stage: disgust. Pictures of women I’d seen embracing their underarms had light hair, still delicate, and sparse on their armpits. Even as a white woman, my body hair is coarse, curly and dark; I can blunt a razor pretty quickly and I’m no stranger to the moustache. I remember one night laying next to my boyfriend, comparing our hair and noting that mine was about twice as thick as his – and much darker. It didn’t make me feel pretty. It didn’t make me feel strong. It made me feel disgusted at how spidery and sharp the hair was, and somehow impossibly disappointed in my own armpits failure for not managing to look more lady like. It didn’t make me feel in touch with myself – I felt repulsion for my own body. It made me feel further alienated from myself than ever before.

It didn’t help that a few things made me feel a little self-conscious about the state of my pits. Some of my family members weren’t best pleased upon seeing them, and some reactions were upsetting. It’s as if being told that your natural state is disgusting. It’s as if asking your mother if she thinks you’re pretty enough to go out without make up, and her telling you that, “no offence darling, but you look vile”. Without performing that essential level of maintenance – to put on some concealer, pluck your eyebrows and shave your skanky, hairy pits – you’re just not fit for public viewing.

I understand the mentality; it’s the very reason that I, three months later, fluctuate so much between liberated self-love, and crushing repulsion. Society dictates to you that anyone that deliberately doesn’t measure up to these standards must be lazy, or just plain dirty. So, for my own comfort, I’m shaving my armpits tomorrow. I’m not disappointed at “giving in”, because all along I was doing this for myself, but it’s a weirdly saddening experience. I pictured so much for us together – I was having visions of running naked through a field of daisies, with matching green armpits and pubes, whilst misogynists fainted all around and butterflies fluttered out from my underarms. Growing out my pits has given me a strange sense of self-awareness; I find it odd now thinking that two months ago I didn’t know what my own body hair looked or felt like. Letting my pits free has given me a lot of different types of freedom – and a solid three inches worth of hair, which I, personally, consider an accomplishment.