Our writer used to think unshaved armpits were gross. What changed?
It’s the end of August, that first week back at school when you see your friends again and find out who got four inches taller and who grew boobs over the summer. I’m in the middle school cafeteria with my friends, unpacking my lunch, when Bobby Marvel, sitting across from me, shouts, “What is that?”
I follow his horrified gaze to a lone hair corkscrewing its way out from under my right arm. My own eyes widen. I gasp. I can’t help it. The lunch table falls silent, every face turned toward me. I feel sick. I’m wearing a red sweater vest with nothing but a new, itchy bra underneath—acquired after a camp counselor pulled me aside to ask me why I didn’t wear one and inform me that I needed to. I don’t have a jacket or any way to cover myself up. Humor has always been my go-to coping mechanism, but I have no witty retort for this situation. I’m eleven.
I’ve blocked out the rest of that middle-school cafeteria scene, but I do remember that I started shaving under my arms the next morning. Since then, until recently, I’ve never gone more than a couple of days without giving my armpits at least a quick soap-and-swipe. For 37 years, I never once considered abandoning my razor. I had so completely conformed to American standards of “feminine” beauty that the idea of a woman with hairy underarms grossed me out just as much as it sickens the men in this video.
If that sounds terribly closed-minded and unsophisticated of me—well, yes, it is. Also, when I was helping pack up a friend’s apartment for a move a couple of years ago, I came across a folder labeled Pros/Cons. It was stuffed with torn-out notebook pages and printed-out sheets of lists he’d made about women he’d dated. In the plus column for one, he’d written, BIG BOOBS. Directly across from this, in the minus column, it said, DOESN’T SHAVE.
I showed it to him and he made a face. “She also didn’t speak English, but that was OK. The real problem was those hairy armpits,” he shuddered. “She had B.O., too. She was French. She didn’t believe in deodorant. But man, those boobs…” He paused, remembering. A moment of silence for the large breasts he’d had to bid farewell.
Putting aside the problem of making a pros and cons list about a human you supposedly care for, the point is, I’ve had help reinforcing my closed-minded beliefs about women and body hair. I’ve also, of my own accord, gotten Brazilian waxes for many years—ever since my divorce, when I re-entered the dating scene.
My waxer, Angela, was recommended to me by a fellow mom on the playground. “She’s fast, cheap, and thorough,” she said. “She’ll do your tail and all of it.” When another mother looked at us quizzically, my friend raised an eyebrow at her. “You know. The tail.” The other mother professed not to know, claiming that she didn’t have any fuzz on her tail. “Check again next time you lather up in the shower,” my friend advised. “You’ll see.”
That night, I got a text from the would-be hairless wonder: “OH GOD. IT IS CONFIRMED.” We both scheduled appointments with Angela ASAP.
All these years later, Angela is like an extended member of my family. I take the train 50 minutes to see her. We chat about our children, our jobs, life, and love while my knees are up by my ears and she squints at my labia, carefully separating them and tweezing out any strays hiding in the folds. She is, indeed, thorough. Also, she probably knows my vulva better than anyone else in the world.
I’ve taken a break from getting Brazilians since I put myself in dating time-out, but I’ve continued to shave my underarms. Armpit hair is different from other pubic hair—it’s public pubic hair. I live for sundress season (especially since I have new tattoos to show off) and bushy pits are not part of the aesthetic. I didn’t plan to grow out my armpit pubes for summer.
It all began when my daughters both left home last September. I’m not particular about what razor I use as I hastily do my pits and legs in the shower, but my daughters get the good ones: They have subscriptions to Athena and Billie. When these appeared in our shower, I stopped buying crappy drugstore razors and used their nice ones instead (sorry, girls). When they went to college last fall and took their razors with them, I quit shaving. Winter was coming, I wasn’t getting naked with anyone—why bother? Who cared?
Sometime after I got past the stubbly, itchy phase of the no-shaving life, I became curious about what would happen next. I was in uncharted territory; part of me wondered how far I could go. With no men looking at me as a romantic prospect, much less touching me, did I care whether or not my armpits were perfectly smooth? I felt like a fugitive from the male gaze, and it felt good. I anticipated my armpits getting gloriously bushy, almost eager for someone to comment on it. I was ready.
All these months in, though, I’m a little sad to report that my armpit pubes got to a certain length and seemed to peter out. When I smear deodorant into my pits, the hair gets slick and dark, but once the gel dries, there’s not much to see. (Yes, I still use old-fashioned anti-perspirant. I know it might give me Alzheimer’s, but as Polly Draper’s character says in my favorite movie, Obvious Child, “I would rather not remember smelling like garbage than remember how stinky I was my entire life.”)
It’s also possible that my eyesight is just failing. Whenever my children are home on break, or I go visit them, they drag me into strong lighting, armed with a pair of tweezers, and take care of the stray hairs sprouting out of my nostrils. Apparently, I’m too blind to see them.
One recent Sunday afternoon, a neighbor stopped by to soak up some spring sunshine (along with sundress season, stoop hang season is nearly upon us). When I told her I’m growing out my pits for summer, she lifted an arm to show me her own fuzzy nest of hair. Solidarity. We ran our fingers over each other’s armpits, laughing as we compared length and texture, tenderly stroking the soft tufts—bonding like chimpanzees.
It’s exciting to realize that, at age 48, I can still discover new things about myself. Who is this Elizabeth with wisps of hair under her arms? I’ve never seen her before. I wink at her in the mirror and she smiles back at me. She’s confident, comfortable in her skin—no sign of the middle-schooler in the red sweater vest, frozen with humiliation in the cafeteria. I feel weirdly sexually attracted to myself.
I never thought unshaved armpits on a woman could be sexy until now. What’s next? Maybe I’m ready to end my time-out from dating. But first, I need to schedule a Brazilian. Angela will be so glad to see me.
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Elizabeth Laura Nelson has been airing her dirty laundry online since she wrote an “It Happened To Me” story for the late, great xoJane. Since then she’s worked at websites including YourTango, Elite Daily, Woman’s World, and Best Life. When she was 12, she kissed the George Michael poster above her bed every night before she went to sleep.
