Reclaiming Body Hair
"Everyone is asking me how come I don't wear makeup, that I'm a makeup artist who doesn't wear makeup. That's the first issue, and then the fact that I show up with hairy arms and legs. At first I was afraid to wear especially my leg hair, at work, because everyone assumes that us makeup artists are delicate ladies and that we should be hairless and 'well groomed'. Even if I have body hair I feel well groomed. I love taking baths, applying scrub to my skin, I have a regimen of creams, maybe I am more well groomed than other women who remove their body hair but don't necessarily take care of their skin that much". Ioana Roman, 23. Romania, May 2022
"Since moving to Germany I became more comfortable with my leg hair and started growing it, something which I never thought of back home in Poland, even if my partner has been keeping her body hair while we were still living there", said Karolina. Karolina&Monika, Berlin, July 2022
Karolina meditating while floating. Berlin, July, 2022
“During my English literature degree, I came in contact with texts talking about femininity and what being a woman is. I realised that actually I don’t have a problem about body hair on anyone else and I don't care about it on me either. I was wondering – who am I doing this for, because for sure it's not for me. So I took a conscious decision not to put myself through the pain anymore”. Claudia removed her body hair from age 9 to 21. Berlin, July 2022
"I started waxing when I was 14, but I always hated doing that to my body. It felt abusive, but I didn't have the courage to stop. About two years ago I gradually started to give up waxing and now I feel good with my hair growing where it naturally does, and I am proud that I can go out on the street with short skirts and hairy legs without caring what people say. So far I haven't had any hate speech or bullying incidents on the street. I think the hardest battle is with our own minds and the concepts that we internalize." Monica Hangan, 22, removed her body hair from age 14 to 20. Romania, April 2022
ÒItÕs all about what you want to accept and I have accepted all the hair on my body. That has made our relationship so comfortableÓ, said Divine. ÒHe is attracted to my feet and toes and I have toe hair, but I wasnÕt reluctant, I love showing my body and he is attracted to that confidenceÓ. Benjamin hugged his girlfriendÕs legs as they were relaxing in their hammock. Divine&Benjamin, Berlin, July 2022
ÒWhen I became pregnant and had my first child, it became clear for me that I didn't want to falsify the image of a woman towards my children. I wanted them to see a woman with hair and I started to become more comfortable with my leg hair, with my femininity in its entirety. ItÕs something that I kind of take pride in now, that I can wear a short skirt and sit at the playground with other parents or children, they can see my hairÓ. Charlotte, Berlin, July 2022
“I like to make a statement out of my hair, for example wearing in the summer delicate sandals and short dresses and keeping my legs hairy. I play with my hair however I want, sometimes I remove it from some parts and leave some intact, it’s fun”. Oana Maria Zaharia, 35. Romania, April 2023
"It's part of my nature
It's my body
And I like to watch it
To accept it as it is
Loving every hair on my body
Not to retouch anything on me
And to love myself as I am", Claudia Lunca, Romania, May 2023
“I had been shaving as a teenager, but then stopped primarily due to discomfort and skin rashes. My mother, despite being herself a fantastic person who was a feminist and a strong supporter of all her daughters to become who they wanted to be in life (in all respects) became quite anxious that this was a form of ‘self-hate’ and that I did not want to be attractive to men, perhaps she was worried I was rejecting potential marriage and having children. At some point, after several arguments and confrontations about this at home, I ‘caved in’ and decided to have myself waxed by a professional, to please my mother. It was extremely painful, but at some level I wondered if I myself would be secretly pleased with the results: I wondered if I did not just want to please my mother but actually also wanted to make myself conventionally ‘beautiful’. So I was really surprised that when the waxing had been done and I saw my legs, I really was not pleased or excited. I did not find them prettier or not pretty: they were just not my legs. So that was the last time I ever removed my body hair. This is now about 40 years ago”. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein is a researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Reading. She participated in writing and edited “The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair”, the first and one of the very few academic books on the issue of femininity and body hair. Reading, UK, August 2024
“I did a course at university which was very influential on me called Theatre, Gender and Performance, and our lecturer would get us to think of times in our lives when we were told we couldn't do something because we were women or assigned female at birth, and I probably stopped shaving my armpits around that time. Not wearing makeup and not shaving are actually non actions but they're seen as being radical and weird for women to do, and it was just sort of equating femininity with performance, and it's what the university course was saying that all gender is performance. So I started growing my armpit hair and I was nervous at first and I remember feeling ready to defend myself if anybody said anything every time I went out, but it's been ten years and nobody said anything, but I do live in Brighton. People are quite chill here and it's a very queer city as well so there's a lot of gender non conforming and also just non conforming in general, it's a lot more accepted in this part of the country than in many other parts, so maybe if I was doing this in a different city or in a different bubble maybe people would have called me on it but it's always been fine. It's quite useful in a way because I feel it weeds out close minded people, like people who would judge me for it I wouldn't want to be friends with anyway”. Kim, Brighton, UK, August, 2024
More-than-human imagined with Mina Docinski, 37. Sibiu, Romania, December 2024.
"Some of our favourite outings in nature as a family are the beaches of the lakes nearby Berlin. Some people wear swimming suits, some are nude, nobody is throwing judgemental looks". Karolina lived most of her life in Poland before moving with her partner and their child to Berlin. July, 2022
ÒI like growing my body hair, I feel free and in my most unaltered shape. I like to see how lush, how long it grows, how it curls. It fascinates me, I like to observe it from different angles and see how it completes the architecture of the bodyÓ, Cabiria Morgenstern, 24, Bulgaria, July 2023
ÒI had two crucial moments in my journey of reclaiming my body hair: when my lover confessed that he no longer felt attracted to me because of my hair, and when my mother told me that she will not go out with me in public if I decide to keep my hair because she felt ashamed with me.
I had heartfelt conversations with both of them finishing it off by asking my mom to take a photo of me in the garden to capture the moment of her accepting me as I am and my lover telling me that he admires that I am a strong woman and appreciates me for not letting myself be influenced by others on what to do with my bodyÓ. Mina Docinski, 37, Sibiu, Romania, December 2024
This collage, titled “Symbiotic Ioana” was inspired by ideas from post humanist feminism, especially Astrida Neimanis’ theory on perceiving the world as bodies of water and the groundbreaking work of microbiologist Lynn Margulis about the symbiotic evolution of life. These theories manifested in the context a photoshoot with Ioana Roman in which our mutual desiderate was to have a fun photo session with pubic hair, depicting it in a non sexualised way. I imagined the body as an ecosystem, with the pubic hair having a nurturing role for the skin microbiota, which, in turn offers balance and immunity to the skin. I portrayed the various bacteria as identical with the self, also inviting for a reflection on the abusive way in which we interact with this microbial part of us when removing our body hair and with it a superficial layer of skin in which much of the microbiota lives. Romania, May 2024