I still haven't shaved my legs. I actually went on public transport this morning dressed to go to straight to the gym, which meant two trains and and a tube with my hairy pins on show. I'm struck by the pressure and obligation I feel to minimise offending hairs on my legs, and under my arms (and even my bikini line).
When did it become normal for women to strive for fuzz free figures? When did the first glimmer of summer sun become the onset of depilatory season? (Not to mention bronzing season, and -of course- bikini body diet season).
I can recall when I went with my sister to take a tour of one of the Oxford colleges and I thought the girl who was taking us round was wearing leggings. She wasn't. A mixture of admiration and disgust sat inside me when I realised what I was seeing were her unshaved, unwaxed legs.
I have been thinking about this hair situation for the last week because I've been mulling over what life in shorts will be like in Australia, and because Boots have launched a new hair minimising product called Inhibitif.
I've read the instructions and essentially twice a day you spray your legs with this stuff whilst continuing to shave or wax when necessary. And after a month or two you can reduce your spray sessions to once every other day.
The billboard adverts for Inhibitif that adorn the walls outside Westfield ask the viewer if they are a shave slave.
Offering Inhibitif as an alternative to being a shave slave only makes you a slave to Inhibitif surely?
Who seriously has the time to ensure they reach these insanely high beauty standards set by the media, by society, and by women and men alike? A colleague of mine said he could never date a woman who didn't shave. But why don't women say they would only date a man who shaves? Why is hair the norm for men, and the enemy for women? These are the kinds of things we see as standard, a traditional for men and women. These traditions haven't always been the norm. These are learned behaviours. These are the traditions that we need to be questioning.
Seriously who has the time to spray their legs twice a day? I can just about fit in (and remember) to wash my face. I am learning how to fit in gym sessions and yoga workouts around a 6-day 50-hour working week. I am still yet to build in time for meditation and relaxation. I certainly don't need yet another standard to reach towards that I don't have time for.
In the 10 (optimistic) minutes that it takes to shave, I could learn how to buy my groceries in French. I could read an article on politics. Hell I could even clean the bath and the toilet. Our time is precious, our lives are short, and we should not be wasting them being a slave not to shaving, not to even Inhibitif, but being a slave to unhelpful, sometimes hurtful, and just downright impractical beauty standards.
So despite every fibre of my being screaming at me to shave my fuzzy pins before it's declared a national forest, I'm not going to. Because I want to learn French and read about politics. And my bathroom really needs a clean.
