BURSTIt’s time to try to re-grow my armpit hair ... and I also now know why cowboy hats are back, face ID is a festival no-no and everyone is wearing Spice Girls T-shirts
It was such a hot debate in the 90s, whether a feminist should shave her armpits. On the one hand, didn’t it speak of a profound unease in your own skin, the result of internalised patriarchal oppression, that you’d want to parade a hairlessness that everyone knew was fake, in order to satisfy a male gaze that fundamentally didn’t want to deal with the messy reality of you? And yet, on the other hand, wasn’t it so much neater and more feminine? Decisions, decisions. We argued a lot but shaved our pits anyway. Then the world moved on without us, and nobody does this any more. The worst thing is, if you’ve shaved your pits for long enough, they won’t grow back; like a metaphor for lost youth, made of hair.
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