My eldest sister always said to me, ‘Don’t shave your legs! Once you start, you won’t be able to stop. But if you just leave it, you’ll have beautiful, soft golden hair on your legs, just like my friend Petronella.’
I was in drama class and I remember that my legs were stretched out in front of me. My skirt was very short, because that’s how girls at Crestwood High wore their skirts – well that’s what a girl named Kristen told me on my first day of Year Nine when I changed schools to Crestwood. She said, ‘you can’t wear your skirt like that, I’ll fix it for you,’ – and she rolled up the top of my skirt so it wouldn’t reach my knees and people wouldn’t make fun of me. I was grateful.
Once, a girl in an older year counted the number of squares in the pattern on my skirt and called me a slut. But that’s another story.
So I was in drama class and it must have been summer, because this memory has a warm, sleepy feel. The sunshine was coming through the windows on the far side of the classroom and two bars of light fell across my legs. The sunlight made the blonde hairs on my legs shine golden and I felt a contented affection for my legs.
Then a boy leaned across and whispered, ‘your legs are gross.’
The affection changed to revulsion in an instant.
I asked another sister to help me shave my legs. She gave me her razor and told me to be careful not to press too hard, in case I cut myself.
I came back out of the bathroom after I was done. I had pressed so lightly that all of the hair was still there. My sister laughed and said, ‘you need to press a bit harder than that!’
She was also the same sister who helped me when I wanted to dye my hair for the first time. She told me to be careful not to get the dye in my eyes. I remember trying to rinse it out and some dripped down my face. I panicked and must have flung my hair around – I suppose it was because I was a dramatic teenager. I opened my eyes just a fraction and all I could see all around me was red. Red hair dye. On the walls. On the bath tub. Everywhere. I thought I was dying. Don’t ask me why. I started yelling for help. My sister had to pick the bathroom lock with a bobby pin in order to come in and rescue me. I know she wasn’t happy about having to help her naked thirteen-year-old sister – but she did.
And I was grateful.
ARGH YES!!!
This tickled my giggles so much. The squares! The knees! I had the struggle with the straight option – “i can’t believe you still wear pleats”. I went straight home and asked for a new skirt. The answer was no – they cost too much. I was reasonable, so I asked for the pleats to be sewn up. The answer was no. So I did.
The next day we went out and bought a new skirt.
And I’m glad I wasn’t the only one with glorious leg hairs- until friends started asking if they could braid them for me. At the time though, it was the done thing to have ‘boundaries’ for shaving (below the knee, above the knee etc). When I asked mum how far I was ‘allowed’ to shave she gave me a weird ‘what-the-frick-did-you-just-ask-me’ look and replied “up to your eyebrows if you want??”.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Can’t wait to read more!
Love it Cat, that skirt story is brilliant!!
I’d love to have had a razor story. LOVE!
Instead, my first hair-removal encounter involved Nair and my underarms … my cousin and I were in primary school (she in year 6, me 5) when we decided to get rid of the non-existent armpit hair we had. We slathered on the foamy cream, left it for about 5 minutes and commented that we both felt a sort of tingling … 7 minutes and “has it been long enough?” … 8 “it’s getting hot” … 9 “IS IT MEANT TO BE THIS HOT?!” … 10 and we were jumping up and down with our arms in the air, white foam caked on our pits and our faces going red from the burn.
OMG! That is hilarious! You poor things!
Hi, my usual take is that while today we, both men and women are free to start shaving everywhere wherever we grow hair we don’t want, women should be equally free of pressure to shave to conform to a standard, not that lots of unfair standard and neurosis don’t permeate the men’s world as well, but that’s another chapter.
It’s a myth that there are zones of the body like arms, upper legs, feet, stomach or other that one shouldn’t start shaving, as they are really no different than the legs, other than that before considering shaving there, make sure there’s enough hair to be worth, as hair there is usually finer and downier than that on legs, often lighter, but even if dark, really soft, don’t overestimate it, as once we start, the shaved zones will look quite uglier and less flattering for a while during the regrowth phase, because hair will be blunt looking much thicker and darker if we want to stop, but don’t worry, that’s also mostly a myth that it actually remains much thicker once you let it fully grow back and it will be back to almost like you never shaved it 🙂 and especially if you do it only once or twice it’s likely gonna grow back exactly as before. If it’s really different consider it might be you growing up in coincidence with shaving, which is what actually contributes the most to thicker hair. So it can be an important decision where to start and where you find it worth the commitment
I can really empathize with you as a guy as well, I’m not very hairy for a guy, but even I started shaving at least my shoulders and feet some time ago and I feel it looks much better. I gladly do it regularly in warmer months, but in winter it grows back quite ugly now lol :D. But I’m not annoyed cause it takes just a few swipes and second on those zones of my body. To Nicola and women in the comments, I’m really sorry you got bullied for that in high school.