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FOTOLIA Armpit hair has slowly made its way from the recesses of the hippie ghetto to become summer 2015’s hottest fashion accessory
In 1999, America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts attended the London premiere of her film Notting Hill, and for a split second lifted up her arm to wave to her fans, inadvertently revealing a dark undergrowth of hair. Roberts’ fuzzy pits triggered reactions of unspeakable disgust — a writer from Britain’s Mirror likened them to “two clumps of seaweed,” while The Independent ran a debate on the pros and cons of Roberts’ personal hygiene habits. Assessing the backlash, Roberts later said, “You would’ve thought I had a chinchilla under there.”
It was around the same time that I was undergoing the routine humiliation of middle school when I overheard some of the girls in my grade speaking in hushed tones about a fellow student who – to their shock and dismay – braided her armpit hair. By refusing to shave after the onset of puberty, she was breaking the law by adolescent girl social codes, and deemed particularly ripe for ostracization.
But in the years since unshaven pits caused a collective furor in both Hollywood and my middle school, armpit hair has slowly made its way from the recesses of the hippie ghetto to become summer 2015’s hottest fashion accessory. Teen queen Miley Cyrus has Instagrammed herself rocking both natural blonde and dyed pink pit hair. Jemima Kirke of Girls fame appeared blissfully unshaven on the red carpet at the CFDA awards, one of the largest fashion events of the year. Women in China are proudly posting armpit hair selfies on the social network Weibo. Even Queen Madge herself posted a lingerie-clad photo of herself last year debuting some blonde fuzz captioned, “Long hair…… Don’t Care!!!!!!” And recently the hashtag #freeyourpits picked up momentum, where hundreds of young women (and some men) show off a veritable smorgasbord of different strains of pit hair: long, short, thick, wispy, blonde, black, purple and green.
The body hair acceptance movement is hardly new — feminists in the ’70s were loud and proud about shaving equality. But women who have made this new brand of feminism more visible include young artists like Toronto-born Petra Collins, and Arvida Bystrom, who have based their practices on laying bare the realities of womanhood long suppressed as improper: pubic hair and period blood feature prominently in their work. Teen sites like Rookie, which launched in 2011, rail against prescriptive behaviour norms for teens, and even before that, there were influential Tumblr bloggers who combined their razor-sharp style with a feminist bent.
One of these bloggers is Celia Edell, a 23-year-old MA candidate from London, Ont. who pens a blog with over 35,000 followers, comprised of mostly young women. Edell, who stopped shaving around five years ago, says that not shaving your armpits is an easy starting point for a lot of young girls with feminism. “It’s feminism 101, but for a lot of people it’s the first step towards reclaiming their body from reading magazines all the time,” says Edell. “It’s just such an obvious double standard. That’s why people latch onto it at first.”
Edell stopped shaving around five years ago in her second year of university as a conscious act of rebellion. “It was very much ‘I’m going to do this so people can be aware of my beliefs,’” she says. But what once felt like a radical proclamation of feminist politics now feels very pedestrian. “I don’t even remember that I have armpit hair now because it’s just something on my body that I don’t think about.”
FOTOLIA Armpit hair has slowly made its way from the recesses of the hippie ghetto to become summer 2015’s hottest fashion accessory
In 1999, America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts attended the London premiere of her film Notting Hill, and for a split second lifted up her arm to wave to her fans, inadvertently revealing a dark undergrowth of hair. Roberts’ fuzzy pits triggered reactions of unspeakable disgust — a writer from Britain’s Mirror likened them to “two clumps of seaweed,” while The Independent ran a debate on the pros and cons of Roberts’ personal hygiene habits. Assessing the backlash, Roberts later said, “You would’ve thought I had a chinchilla under there.”
It was around the same time that I was undergoing the routine humiliation of middle school when I overheard some of the girls in my grade speaking in hushed tones about a fellow student who – to their shock and dismay – braided her armpit hair. By refusing to shave after the onset of puberty, she was breaking the law by adolescent girl social codes, and deemed particularly ripe for ostracization.
But in the years since unshaven pits caused a collective furor in both Hollywood and my middle school, armpit hair has slowly made its way from the recesses of the hippie ghetto to become summer 2015’s hottest fashion accessory. Teen queen Miley Cyrus has Instagrammed herself rocking both natural blonde and dyed pink pit hair. Jemima Kirke of Girls fame appeared blissfully unshaven on the red carpet at the CFDA awards, one of the largest fashion events of the year. Women in China are proudly posting armpit hair selfies on the social network Weibo. Even Queen Madge herself posted a lingerie-clad photo of herself last year debuting some blonde fuzz captioned, “Long hair…… Don’t Care!!!!!!” And recently the hashtag #freeyourpits picked up momentum, where hundreds of young women (and some men) show off a veritable smorgasbord of different strains of pit hair: long, short, thick, wispy, blonde, black, purple and green.
It’s easier to make decisions about your own body when you see other people making decisions that seem genuine
Randi Bergman, the Executive Digital Editor of FASHION magazine, attributes the wider acceptance of body hair to the “new wave of feminism that’s been gaining steam over the last three years where everything is fair game.” Bergman recently penned an article, “Why I’m So Down With #freeyourpits,” about how her own lax beauty habits coincide with this new trend. She finds that when her pit hair starts getting unkempt she’s prone to lifting up her arms and flashing it in a small, everyday act of rebellion. Bergman says that having pit hair is the kind of social transgression that “might horrify a proper aunt” but is unlikely to have real world repercussions.
The body hair acceptance movement is hardly new — feminists in the ’70s were loud and proud about shaving equality. But women who have made this new brand of feminism more visible include young artists like Toronto-born Petra Collins, and Arvida Bystrom, who have based their practices on laying bare the realities of womanhood long suppressed as improper: pubic hair and period blood feature prominently in their work. Teen sites like Rookie, which launched in 2011, rail against prescriptive behaviour norms for teens, and even before that, there were influential Tumblr bloggers who combined their razor-sharp style with a feminist bent.
One of these bloggers is Celia Edell, a 23-year-old MA candidate from London, Ont. who pens a blog with over 35,000 followers, comprised of mostly young women. Edell, who stopped shaving around five years ago, says that not shaving your armpits is an easy starting point for a lot of young girls with feminism. “It’s feminism 101, but for a lot of people it’s the first step towards reclaiming their body from reading magazines all the time,” says Edell. “It’s just such an obvious double standard. That’s why people latch onto it at first.”
Edell stopped shaving around five years ago in her second year of university as a conscious act of rebellion. “It was very much ‘I’m going to do this so people can be aware of my beliefs,’” she says. But what once felt like a radical proclamation of feminist politics now feels very pedestrian. “I don’t even remember that I have armpit hair now because it’s just something on my body that I don’t think about.”
