The Pain Of Growing Up Hairy
I’m often asked when I first became aware of my body hair. It is something I have vivid memories of. I was sitting in English class in 7th grade of Keith Junior High School. I was wearing my standard attire, a pair of Wrangler® jeans and a slipover top. Now you have to remember I was a fat kid, so being made fun of was something that happened continuously. I tried to block it out but you can’t always do that. Anyway, I remember hearing giggling behind me and heard my name. The comments I heard were something like “she looks like a monkey” and “she ain’t human”.
I realized they were talking about me. I realized that when I sat down, my jeans rode down low and my top rode up a bit, exposing my lower back. I remember going home and looking in the mirror.
I was not very familiar with my own body at that time. I was 13 at the time and the early 1970’s were different than today. Because of my looks and size I was not into primping myself or checking out my body in mirrors. I never noticed that I had excess body hair. That day will remain forever etched in my mind. I remember looking in the bathroom mirror and seeing the hair. It wasn’t easy standing on the toilet and trying to look in the mirror! The bathroom was rather large, roughly 8’ x 10’, so I peered into the mirror.
I began to thoroughly look at my body in the mirror, and what I saw shocked me. Besides the standard pubic hair I had hair all over my butt. It was fur-covered. My lower back was covered. I was embarrassed to tears. From that day forth I always wore either a leotard under my clothing or very long shirts.
I also noticed then, when I looked closely, that I had a little mustache. I shaved it. Once you shave it you have to do it forever. It’s been, what, 18 years now ………..
That summer it was again pointed out to me how hairy I was. I was at summer camp, wearing shorts, and a girl mentioned the long, thick, dark hair on the backs of my thighs. So I began wearing knee-length shorts and covering my legs. Of course I was shaving my lower legs at that time. I was also shaving my underarms, and the memory of that first shave is well-remembered.
I remember at age 11 begging my mother to let me shave my underarms like the big girls did, and she wouldn’t. She said I had to be older. At age 13 she bought me my first electric razor and away went the underarm hair. I also regularly shaved my lower legs.
My next memory is of shaving my stomach. Yes, my stomach. I don’t have just a treasure trail, I have a band of hair that goes all across my stomach, much in the same way the hair pattern is on men (hence male pattern hirsutism). I was a fat kid but still loved to wear halter tops. Well, someone made fun of the hairy stomach so I had to shave it. I remember my neighbor, Marcia, pointing at my stomach and telling everyone how I shaved my stomach. So at that time I stopped wearing halter tops. I was also shaving the treasure trail, at least most of the area around my belly button which had (still has) long, thick hairs, a few inches in length.
In high school I always wore jeans and long shirts so wasn’t “outed” as a hairy woman too many times. In gym class they wanted us to take swimming. There was no way in hell I was gonna expose this fat, hairy body in a bathing suit in front of my classmates, so I told them I had a doctor’s note and couldn’t swim due to a medical condition. Actually I told them I couldn’t take gym, period, and for the next three years when I chose my classes I never had to take gym!! I didn’t date in high school so the hair didn’t cause me problems with that, but it did. I didn’t date because of the hair. I didn’t want anyone to know how hairy I was, so I withdrew into my own shell. My best friend, Stuart, never knew how hairy I was. No one knew.
When I was out of school and into the working world, the fact I was so hairy was again pointed out to me. My boss’s daughter, a precocious little five-year old brat, saw me sitting at my desk one day and said “you have dark hair on your arms”. Well, I knew I had extremely hairy forearms but I had hoped no one else would pay much attention.
So, after that, I was very conscious about my forearms. I actually tried bleaching them. But, I realized that if I went from dark brown to blonde overnight, people would notice. So I bought a bottle of creme bleach and several small paint brushes, the kind you use for paint-by-numbers. I tried to paint every fourth or fifth hair to make it blonde, to sort of hide it. All it did was turn the hair orange.
Seems as though very, very dark hair has to go through many stages of lightening and to get it blonde, one simple application ain’t gonna do it!
Let’s see. Next I remember living in Boston. I was parking my car at the New Chardon Street garage (no MBTA for me) and had to take the elevator down to the ground level to walk up the hill for work.
I got in the elevator with several other people and one little girl was standing next to me. Of course I was dressed up for work in a skirt. My lower legs were shaved below the knee and the skirt fell right below that. She was only a couple of years old and even though I’m not quite 5’2”, she was down by my kneecap. She lifted my skirt and showed my hairy thigh. I quickly brushed her hand away and smoothed my skirt only to hear her say “mommy, is that lady a man?” I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. We hit ground, I ran up the hill and from that day on never, ever got near a child on an elevator.
Hm. I was working and living in Kendall Square in Cambridge. I was working with, um, shall we say some less-than-educated bimbos. Welfare moms with several kids, different fathers for each, boyfriends supporting them, drug abuse, etc. You get the picture. Real bitches. One of the girls told me she heard a rumor I was a guy. I laughed and asked why someone would think that and she said that apparently I was wearing a man’s button-down shirt and one of the buttons popped open, revealing a thick line of hair going down my belly.
I quit that job the next week.
I had one positive experience, though. I was living on Beacon Hill in Boston and working down the street at Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary. I had to have a pre-employee drug screening, tests for measles and mumps, etc. The young intern who examined me was thumping my tummy and couldn’t help notice the hair. I was lying there, my eyes squeezed tight, hoping it would be over soon.
He asked if I had been to a doctor because of the hair and I mumbled something about Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (next issue I’ll get into the embarrassing details of years of doctor visits in an attempt to cure me). He then shocked the hell out of me by saying his girlfriend had a very hairy stomach and he loved natural women. Imagine my shock!!
That was seven years ago and I haven’t shaved my underarms in six years now. I don’t wear tank tops because I”m too hairy to do so, so no one really notices the underarm hair. And I will never, ever shave them again.
Used with permission © Hair To Stay Dot Com 2004, All Rights Are Reserved.
