RANTS AND SHAVES

I began shaving at the very moment that my puberty was announced, precisely, by the forestation of my legs, my armpits and “there”.
By instinct, with no previous training, let alone, experience, at the first sight of that primeval moss, I grabbed my father’s shaving kit, locked myself in the washroom and just shaved. In spite of not being a big fan of things always associated with most hair eradication activities like blades, blood and tears I felt the fear and did it anyway.
Legs, armpits, "there". I just shaved away in spite of that I had been warned by my mom and older girls about the whole infuriating paradox, you know that the minute you chop it, it starts to grow back!
From the very first time I crossed the point of no return and became a slave.

I would be shaving or bleaching, or plucking or waxing et cetera, during my life lease on this planet. And yes. I have been faithfully doing it every week for 30 years! More time than I had been a slave of any relationship; more time I have ever spent doing anything else, including “that”…
But I am not unique. I am not the only one. Most women in this hemisphere remove their body hair off. So, why do we do it, you ask? Why don’t we just listen to our feminist and/or lesbians women- sisters-friends who advice us to rejoice in our womynfur as do shecoyotes, shewolves and shechinchillas?
Why can’t we just accept that, just like men, we are also related to apes and it is not natural to have a smooth -like -glass body surface? Isn’t it time for gender equality?

Well, I can’t speak for other women but I will give you MY reasons:

Hairy legs look disgusting and make me feel more depressed than uncle IT with bubble gum stuck to his face, reading “The Bell Jar”, while listening to an HBO special of Richard Jeni, when he does an impression of Kurt Kobain during a heroin withdrawal just when he had and broken up with Courtney.
Now, hairy legs through panty hose...-not that I remotely own a pair of pantyhose but still…hairy legs through pantyhose will speak volumes about your mental health, even if you have it in mint condition. Hairy legs through panty house, will slander your sanity at high decibels. I mean, you may be the only female CEO at a huge corporation, but the minute you show hairy legs through panty hose, forget it. They will think that you had let yourself go, so far, you are about to see your career end in fast forward. I am serious.

Not to mention hairy armpits. Hairy armpits are ABOMINABLE! I could not describe how discombobulated would I feel by having a bonsai stick out of a Versace tank-top, or for that matter, of any article of clothing with no designer name and no sleeves. I can’t describe it but I can say that I would feel “old fashion”. Very old fashion. Like if I had gone back, way back, many links in the chain of evolution when I would have hairy ...everything... and no opposable thumbs, which wouldn’t even matter since cutlery would not have been yet invented,not to mention shaving kits and I could not even complain, because language would not have been invented yet either, though... I’d seem to turn my head when someone calls out, Cheetah!!!!

Why would a woman like to show off hairy armpits?, one may asks. Why in the hell would anybody like it? It beats me. But I sure know that if, when you wear a summer dress you look like you have Bin Laden on a headlock...you have lost my interest in any other attribute that you may have!

--You may be a scientist at Harvard University giving a lecture about inventing this new vaccine that cures the common cold and all I will be focusing on would be your pits. Wondering whether you harboured the vaccine in there... and choosing rather to sneeze!

--You may be the Pope...well, bad example... you may not ever be the Pope, you are a woman... and besides, the Pope does not wear summer dresses. Bad example about hairy armpits on a person with power, but the point is, it takes away all your credibility. Seriously.

--You may be the First Lady of a nation and people see you at a rally giving a speech, waving to them with hairy, sweaty armpits they won’t concentrate in anything you say.
Their eyes will be fixed on that area, wondering if your husband, the president, has a strange fetish and likes to dress in a loincloth, swing from your hairy pits and yell, Cheetah.
The people would see you wave away and come up with a lot of assumptions about you, including that you are an evil wicked witch with whom the devil has made a pact--so he can get into politics-- They have to asume you are a witch because no one can believe a public woman who waves a lot, would want to show off bushy armpits in a scalding hot country



There is no justifiable reason to grow your armpit hair when you know you have to wave a lot...Unless, of course, you are aiming for distraction.Smoke and mirrors coming out of your pit,may take the people´s eyes away from the real issues, like unemployment, hunger that your husband the president is a genocidal rapist thief...

But I'd insist on saying that even when blind ambition forces you to do very questionable acts, you should do them with shaven armpits.I would bet Condolezza shaves, so did Evita,so did Lucrezia Borgia...why? because even when you are a ruthless wench,you know that bush under your arm is gross!

There .I had, once again, confessed. I am feminist who hates body hair passionately. There is no 12 steps group for people like me...

And I can care less if some believe that women who remove it are women that have been brainwashed by white-pig-male members of the patriarchy.
I can’t care less if anybody tells me that any sheperson that does not let her body hair grow, is a pathetic, self-hating –woman- traitor.
And I don’t give a flying follicle that you hate the fact that a lot of us trim it, wax it, shave it, clip it, pluck it, bleach it," Mohawk" it, make a playboy bunny with.
The point is, if you are short a Y chromosome, whack those weeds!
and if you ask me, we will achieve gender equality when all—-not only the “queer”-- the humans that have that extra Y chromosome also shave. Their legs, armpits and “there”.
And in that opinion, I am not alone. We are millions. Let’s unite!