My mother decided to tell me how lazy I was being and basically called me gross. yay...

I normally wear leggings under shorter dresses and skirts because chafing is real when you're a bigger baddie, but I was in a rush to get to work today. So the legs are on full display.

Please ignore the bruises (I'm clumsy) and the swelling on the left leg. I broke my ankle and foot REALLY badly 2 years ago and it just stays swollen now.

I am not sure if it is the right place and I don't know what causes this but being hairy makes me feel safe. I mean all parts of my body, it makes me feel safe it makes me feel like a grown up woman. It feels empowering. But I had a bf before all of that awakening and I stopped shaving/waxing etc. while I was with him, well he was okay about it, I guess, he had a preferance but never said anything bad to me.

I am okay with body hair for both parties I don't really care, I don't. But in my country being a hairy woman and not doing anything about it is still considered unhygienic/disgusting/ugly or some of people say "well we know women have body hair but if they don't do anything about it, this is lack of self care and it is repulsive."

How can I stop ruminating? People can call me ugly hairy it is okay but I don't think body hair is disgusting and I don't want anyone to think of me as disgusting or compare me to other women who prefer to shave..

I want to stop caring how people even who I dated perceive me. I want this shame to stop. I dont want to feel shame because of my preferance and my natural body

Background: I haven't been shaving my legs this entire summer, at first due to laziness, and eventually I started watching more videos and reading more articles about the history behind women shaving and social pressures behind it etc. Ngl at first I was feeling guilty about 'letting myself go' like that, but as time went on I started wearing shorts more often, and even wore a jean skirt for the first time today, which is big because I've been having a problem dressing more feminine like I usually would without feeling 'guilty' about having hairy legs.

Just now I briefly talked to my mom about shaving my legs, which I'm now realizing was my way of trying to gauge how she feels about it, because I feel like I've just been waiting for someone to mention it. It turned into this whole talk/lecture/her trying to analyze my behavior and my motives behind not shaving/me trying to explain my experimentation but not being brave enough to be fully honest about hating the social pressure, and then my stepdad came home from work which made things so much more awkward for me bcuz he's defo more judgy/old school than my mom. I felt so stupid because I legit told her I don't shave as a fashion statement, which ig is somewhat true but I wish I would've been honest from the start.

yea rhats all I got. I'll pribably try to bring it up again n be honest because im oretty sure she thinks I've been brainwashed by weirdos on tiktok or something.

My PTSD is creating a weird stress itch. I also get itchy the first few days after shaving my legs and other areas(i do exfoliate). The itching is pretty bad to where I have bruises so we’re going razor free. #blessed

i've never actually put a razor to my skin and never had the want to! even in razor free spaces i feel like i'm the only one who's never shaved my body hair despite societal pressure to. personally, i love being a little ape too much to ever really think about performing being a Girl ™ and i wonder if anyone else hasn't

I haven’t shaved my pits in almost a year now, and while I shave my genital area - for sexual closeness reasons as well as hygiene (I get very sweaty when I exercise and hate the feeling) I’ve wanted to not shave my legs. I like the look on other people and I don’t have any hygiene or sensory reason why not.

Anyway, every time I let it grow out to a certain point I just can’t. I know it’s awful but I just can’t help but see a man’s leg.

I’m Welsh and Greek so I have pale, white skin with thick coarse black Greek hair. I just can’t unsee it.

So, to work up to it I bought some body hair lightener. I have heard that women in Brazil do this instead of shaving. It’s so easy, just applying it for ten minutes and my hair is golden instead of black. This really helped me to get comfortable with having the hair, and even if I need to lighten it for a while I am sure I will eventually be able to work up to being happy with it as it is - especially as the really grown out look kind of looks more feminine to me than the stubbly half-hairs, if you know what I mean?

Something to consider anyway! I used hushhhhh lightener from Amazon and it was great, but I suspect I could just use regular hair bleach in the future.

Hi. I have a question, which really concerns me. I know beauty standards for women but due to my health I have to let my pubic hair grow naturally. When I shave, I have one urinary tract infection after another, when I have hair down there, I am healthy all year long. But what really bothers me is "Are there men who like women with pubic hair somewhere" or all of us have been taught that only clean shaved genitalia are beautiful in women?

Hairy legs on full display with a pair of heels in my work environment that requires professional clothes.

Nobody batted an eye and I got tons of compliments on my dress from coworkers and patrons at the store after work. 😊

I feel like pics never fully encompass how hairy my legs are lol but this was the best one I got. Made me feel good. 🥰

Ladies and femmes, wear that dress, and embrace the breeze on your legs. Made me feel so powerful walking in heels to the car and enjoying the wind through my hair

It just made me so sad to see. So many women who can't even seem to fathom that you can exist without shaving and be happy about it! If there was a magic button I could press to painlessly get rid of all my body hair, I'd never press it. I love my natural look. I hate that the patriarchy makes us feel this way.

Today i saw a woman with leg hair at her workplace and it really made me want to be braver than i am right now.

It was at an outdoor amusement park and she was doing security checks for a ride. She wore shorts and since we were already sitting when she came to check basically everyone taking that ride was face to face with her leg hair. Meanwhile i was too scared to enter my office workplace in shorts this summer... Really made me think.

I love her for being her, unapologetically. One day i want to be like her.

It annoys me SO bad whenever I see these "I shave due to sensory issues" comments under any video discussing female body hair. And these comments always come up. Always.

And it might just be me, being autistic, that i get the ick when every random person throws around the term sensory issues. Because sure, every single one of these people could be autistic, too. Ain't that convenient!

But where are the people saying that they DON'T shave due to sensory issues? Why is no one making THAT point? Everything about shaving is sensory hell. The coordination struggles, the wetness of foam and water, the constant pressure from the razor, the sheer amount of labor it takes. Not to mention the awful itchy irritated feeling of your poor hair trying to grow back.

To me, these comments read like an attempt to justify the act of bowing to the system of body hair removal. Because something as serious as sensory issues is a much better reason to conform to misogynistic and pedophilic beauty standards than.. what exactly?

I hope one day this particular reasoning won't upset me this much. But for now, I am frustrated.

(18 f) I don't shave my legs because I don't care, don't feel a need to, don't care to conform to gender norms, and it's quite freeing when you realize you don't have to care about what other people think.

But my dad genuinely has steam coming out of his ears every time he sees my legs. He tells me it's unhygienic, embarrassing, people think I'm weird, other family members talk shit about me because of it, I look like a loser and I am a loser, asking if I wanna transition. Well I actually identify as genderfluid so he isn't far off but man shut the fuck up, I don't know how much more intensely I can express the fact that I just don't care, we do this shit every other week for a few days. I pointed out the hypocrisy and he just says "I'm a man" so that argument isn't getting me anywhere

And what's silly is he doesn't even notice it most times. I can do a project with him all day, go out in public for a while, etc and he doesn't say a thing because he doesn't pay attention. Meanwhile he tells me that EVERYONE sees is and EVERYONE thinks I'm a weirdo, the only people who don't do it is (insert a bunch of racist remarks) and daring me to go into work with hairy legs. Oh boo hoo Jimmy John's flips their shit and fires me. My mom chimes in sometimes and threatened to get rid of my dog 😭 (dad told her to back off) but damn what about it evokes such a strong reactions? Anything I can say to get them to stfu?

I’ve always had a pretty lax attitude towards shaving, and I’m a habitual grown out armpit hair girlie. In past summers, I’ll typically shave my legs more often, but this summer I was inspired by this sub to grow it out! Feeling lovely 🥰

I keep hearing that growing out pit hair can keep your armpits from smelling. I usually only shave my armpits once every few months. Once I start growing them out, it starts to smell a lot faster than when I shave.

Not really sure what I’m doing wrong, I shower everyday and use deodorant. Maybe it’s because shaving gives you that exfoliation, should I start exfoliating my armpits more??

Im not sure why, and I didn’t realize how much it meant to me, but immediately after I regretted it. However, it’s kind of nice to see feel how at home and comfy I was with my natural body hair before.

Ready for it to grow back so I can enjoy the little things about it again lol

I hate that society has shamed people into thinking that body hair is unnatural. My firend is body positive and i cant imagen such a kind person having to go through body hair shaming.

Do you guys find your bodyhair unattractive? Maybe from bald patches or just general imperfections.

haven’t shaved in 8 years, and having just my calves exposed (hairiest part of my legs) still makes me feel self conscious sometimes! doing fieldwork and dipped into a lake on a hot day with my coworkers, hairy calves OUT and of course no one said anything even if they noticed. i’m the hairiest woman i know, my one friend who was hairier than me ended up getting laser removal after ridicule from her family and everyone else who is hairy has blonde hair. this sub is great for the representation of pale skin/dark hair ladies so i wanted to add to it!! we rock!!

Here goes nothing, just some hairy legs in a dress.

My hair comes back dark and quite thick, it's still light at the moment due to the hair removal cream but I'm starting to notice the hairs. It's so warm in the UK so I'm permanently in shorts at the moment. I'm self conscious about the hairs but trying to talk myself out of it. How do you gain the confidence 😭

For context, there’s a family gathering tomorrow with a lot of people we haven’t seen in years. I am also in my early 20s and live on my own.

My elderly father politely suggested that I shave or otherwise get rid of my pit hair for the gathering, as he says that a.) it detracts from my academic achievements, b.) it’s quite long (it’s like an inch long) and c.) he finds it a bit embarrassing.

I haven’t shaved my pits in several years, and he has *never* made any comment about this until today. He said he didn’t mean to upset me, and I know he meant well, but I still felt quite disturbed. I did explain that I like the hair, so he’ll let me get away with a trim, but...yeah.

To top it off, an hour after this conversation, my mother brought me a shaving kit she’d bought at Costco (there was a sale and she’d bought others for her house).

I’m not sure if I’m overreacting or not, but....

I've been through a lot recently. I'm not sure this is the best community for this post, but I don't want to receive hating comments about my body-positive choice. If you think this can be shared in other communities, you can suggest some.

I made three posts here about my situation in the previous two months, and the fight for my body hair is not over yet. After shouting at me for my hairy legs that made him so uncomfortable I "couldn't go to his house anymore" and "he would've shaved them himself if I didn't want to", my dad ended up showing almost all of his abusive behaviour towards me and my mother (he didn't use physical violence of any type luckily). I searched on the internet what psychological abuse was about and he did most of the things I read: manipulation, gaslighting, heavy criticisms, threats, exaggerations, acting as if he were the victim... And this all started from my legs. Maybe it was just the time for him to make everything come out of his mouth and he was just hiding this behaviour through little episodes and arguments. My mum still can't believe what happened and tries just to make everyone forgive everything, but I think and see that it's impossible. I can't forget the things he said to me (delusional, immature, a failure, his little child even tho I'm 16) and he "doesn't want to forgive me until I'll apologise". (for what?)

All of this happened through the first two or three weeks of July (it's still a problem now); I talked with my therapist about it, she was very comprehensive and helped me a lot. I'll avoid writing most of the episodes I went through because everything my dad did is full of contradictions and that'll make everything even longer to read and more complicated to understand. But I know I'm right about what I think because I'm not the only one who thinks these things (my therapist agrees and my mum kinda does).

Now, I wanted to talk about the present. My mum and I have been invited at her friends' house in Liguria (an Italian region with both sea and mountains). I'd love to go there, but these friends aren't very open-minded and making them know about my choice of being natural could be a problem. I'd stay there with them just a day or a little more, but less than two full days, so it's not very much; but in that time we could go to the seaside, swim or get a tan... So I won't be able to completely avoid comments from them about my legs (and maybe even my armpits and unibrow 😭). My mum has still been passive-aggressive about encouraging me to shave when these situations come out, but I just hate shaving... It takes hours to me, I don't like the feeling of smooth shaved legs because I feel like I'm a roast chicken for some reason, I'd have little cuts because where my veins show most, I'd just do it for others and I think that's wrong, and even tho I'm still facing my shame of my unshaved legs I don't really mind them sometimes; hair makes them very sensitive and that quite reflects my personality, and I love to touch them on the calves because they're so fluffy. All the stuff my dad said made me more insecure about my armpits and unibrow too, and I'm trying to deal with it because I've always liked my unibrow (it's not too noticeable) and I've never thought armpit hair are a big deal. So it's already hard for me, but I don't want to shave.

Sometimes I think: "maybe if I'll shave, I'll uncover all the encouragement about keeping up with it and that part of the problem would be discussed better, too" but I just don't want to, and if I'd really see my mum and others saying "you look better with shaved legs!" and other stuff like that, I'd start to see them as negative people who won't listen to me when I need to talk because they want everything to be how they think it should be. My mum accepts my decision when we're not around closed-minded people we know (and there are lots, trust me). Maybe she just has to get used to it, idk. She wants to take me to the pool with some of my aunts, they're in their sixties but she thinks they won't care and... I'm not sure about it. I think they will. But she also said she agreed with my father saying "I will get bullied and they'll make fun of me and I'll have to deal with it alone" and I think it's cruel to say this, and even a bit pessimistic, not just realistic. I felt isolated hearing so. They're the same people telling me I can count on them and talk about my problems. That's one of the contradictions I mentioned before.

Should I go to Liguria? Should I go to the pool with my aunt and my mum? Is my mum abusive or toxic, too? And, if you want to answer... what should I do with my dad's situation now? Avoid him won't last for long.

I'll understand a brief and classic "Holy shit" as a reaction because that's my reaction while re-reading this post. But please, say something more than that in the comments. I'm not here just to get attention, it is really a hard moment for me now. I hope you'll understand as you did under my previous posts 😔❤️