Today in “stories I'm writing in 2024 that could also have been major celebrity gossip in 1973” news, actor Emma Corrin has sparked controversy for posing on the cover of Harper's Bazaar with their armpit hair visible. Granted, I might feel a little bit personally attached given that a) one of the first places Corrin displayed their body hair was on the cover of a 2022 Vogue issue that I did the interview for, and b) I haven't shaved my legs or armpits in about two years (yes, really), but…is the concept of a human mammal wearing their hair as it grows from their body really still controversial? (Apparently so, if you're willing to take a tour through the Harper's Bazaar comment section on the Corrin post, but I highly recommend avoiding it if you're not a big fan of misogyny or transphobia.)
We've been relitigating the finer points of the body hair debate for decades, ever since the nascent feminist movement of the 1960s and ‘70s was broadly dismissed as a bunch of “shrill, overly aggressive, man-hating, ball-busting, selfish, hairy, extremist, deliberately unattractive women with absolutely no sense of humor who see sexism at every turn”, as Susan K. Douglas put it in her 1994 book Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media. Emphasis on “hairy”; despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of women in the U.S. do shave their legs and armpits, feminists (including those who, like Corrin, are nonbinary or gender-nonconforming) are still treated like we’re personally going to drive the Venus razor empire out of business.
As a two-year veteran of the I Don't Shave Club, I've grown somewhat used to fielding backhanded “compliments” (or, depending on the age and demeanor of the person involved, straight-up negging) about my visible leg and armpit hair. I can genuinely say at this point that I simply don't care; as a fat, queer person, I'm not overly concerned about fitting the mold of binary Western beauty standards, and as someone in a currently monogamous relationship, I'm no longer plagued by concerns that the next person I hook up with will find the sight of my body hair too unsightly to deal with. (Memo to former Emma, or to anyone who needs it: if you bring someone home and they have Opinions about however much body hair you have or don't have, make them leave and then order a burrito. Trust me, you'll have a much more fulfilling night.)
I might be lucky enough to have developed the protective skin necessary to not be particularly worried about it when someone (even someone who happens to be related to me) expresses distaste or concern about my body hair, but that's not the case for everyone, sadly; white people like myself don't have to deal with the added layer of racism that can come into play for many women of color, and South Asian women in particular, when it comes to body hair, and it's a lot easier and safer in general for people like myself or Corrin to publicly transcend the gender binary (in ways that might include, but are not limited to, growing out our body hair) with the knowledge that we will not be as heavily scrutinized or even criminalized as our QTPOC counterparts.
All that is to say, there are definitely still battles to be fought on the body-hair front, but if even a thin, white, conventionally attractive person like Corrin can't show their armpit hair on the cover of a magazine without inviting capital-D Discourse, it's difficult to imagine that our society is quite as evolved as we like to pretend it is. When many women and gender-nonconforming individuals still feel pressured to shave in order to feel attractive or even valid, it's a signal the work of our ‘60s and ’70s feminist counterparts clearly still isn't concluded; hopefully, we'll eventually land somewhere close to the “eyes on your own paper” approach to body hair (or, in other words, if it's not growing on your own personal body, don't worry about it, and even then, try to do what actually feels good to you and not what the Instagram algorithm demands!) and allow celebrities like Corrin as well as pissed-off civilians to simply…live their lives, hair and all.
