Body Hair: Hairy Female Legs

Be free. Be yourself. Say “no” to gender norms.

Growing up, I always felt the society pressuring me to conform. It wasn’t always verbal directions to behave in accordance with the accepted norms. Sure, I have often been explicitly told to “behave like a normal woman,” but it doesn’t need to be explicit. Humans are subject to peer pressure. We follow social cues in order to fit in. Conformity is simply something humans do. Whenever I was in a room with several other people who all behaved in the same way, I felt the pressure to conform and imitate their behavior.

Even before I admitted to myself that I’m genderqueer, I had problems with body hair. I refused to wax my legs, because the thought of enduring pain for the sake of beauty seemed inherently repulsive for me. Nor did I have free time to shave my legs daily, hence most of the time I had some visible hair on my legs. Ultimately I got fed up with shaving and simply defaulted to wearing long pants at all times. It took me several more years’ worth of baby steps until I was finally comfortable wearing shorts during summer. I just felt odd and very self-aware whenever I was in some public place where every single woman had smooth and hairless legs.

This is a self-photo. Those are my hairy legs. I don’t perceive myself as a woman, nor do I normally wear high heel shoes. In fact, I never even learned to walk in them. At first I thought of taking this photo barefoot, but then I realized that such an image would simply look like a photo of male legs thus failing to portray my main point, which was to oppose the gender norms, to bend these norms and combine masculine and feminine traits into a single photo. Moreover, whenever a woman appears in some public place with hairy legs while wearing casual clothes, she might get lucky and avoid criticism—after all, people might assume that maybe she has some excuse for why she was busy with other things and wasn’t able to shave her legs that day. Yet when a woman is dressing up and wearing high heels, she is obliged to have smooth legs. Thus I went to a second-hand store and bought a pair of cheap women’s shoes especially for the sake of taking this photo.

I firmly believe that all those people who are uncomfortable with the existing gender norms ought to just ignore them and instead do whatever feels right for them. It doesn’t matter whether you are a cis woman who simply prefers a more casual appearance instead of feminine fashion or whether you are a trans person who prefers to change your sex, you should have a right to choose for yourself. People shouldn’t be pressured to conform to gender norms; instead every one of us ought to be free to choose what we like and what feels comfortable for us. Gender norms aren’t destiny, and the society should stop enforcing them on every single person.

By the way, for all those cis women who choose to shave their legs, because they like doing that—you are welcome to do with your body whatever you like. I have no objections to women choosing to remove their body hair or being feminine. I only have a problem with the society forcing people to conform to gender norms against their will.

—

I took this photo with my camera on a tripod and a remote trigger in my hand. I used Canon EOS 5DS R camera with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro Lens. Photo is taken in a studio with artificial light. Lighting is a white beauty dish with a grid for the main light, a standard reflector with a grid for the backdrop light, and the third light (gridded standard reflector) was placed slightly behind me to create a subtle “hair light.” This photo was actually somewhat hard to make, because I never learned to walk on heels. Normally, when taking a self-portrait, I would set up my lights and my camera, then I’d take a test photo, go take a look at my camera’s LCD screen, adjust my lights or camera settings, take another test photo, look at my camera’s LCD screen once again… This time, however, that turned out to be tricky, because I couldn’t walk in those shoes. Getting this shot took me longer than usually, because I had to put on and remove those shoes way too many times. By the way, I use heavy C-stands for holding my studio lights. A C-stand + a studio strobe + a beauty dish weight around 10 kilograms. Moving those around while wearing heels is hard. I pity women who are required to wear heels at work. Uncomfortable footwear is a pain when you need to get things done.