Why Hair Discourse is Important to Me

I am an Indian woman who has dealt with body hair her whole life. I have felt insecure about it, in awe by it, and generally quite emotional regarding the topic. Upon reaching puberty, I felt marginalized and bordered from others because of my hair genetics. Reading the article about the geographies of hair allowed me to understand the broader discourse on the social construction of hair that has shaped my relationship with hair and other people.

I spent my childhood feeling insecure about the hair on my limbs, as a lot of brown girls do too. I was often teased, and at times, and even occasionally laughed at when someone touched my arm. I also felt very insecure when I started wearing skirts, comparing myself to the girls who went to my predominantly white school. Their hair was light and almost invisible compared to mine. My mother was uncomfortable with me shaving my limbs, because at the time, I was only eleven years old, so my insecurities and a contentious relationship with hair continued to grow. It defined me: I was the brown girl with a hairy face and arms.

And I didn’t just feel the dominating and traumatic norms in my school or growing up around white people, such ideas were prevalent in colonized beauty standards presented by Indian society. Bollywood played a significant role in stigmatizing hair in my life as it often depicts women with lip hair as ugly. The handsome male actor only wants hairless women.

In India, ads for hair removal products and hair or skin lightening products are everywhere. Women in India spend a lot of money on removing body hair, because Indian women are genetically hairy. So, all around me, I saw my older cousins doing various things to remove their unibrows and arm hair. In India, girls feel pressured to remove hair as this is the only beauty standard they know and are told that no one will marry you unless you remove bodily hair.

When I was about 12 or 13, I started threading my eyebrows and shave my legs, and honestly, I felt so much better about myself and I practically celebrated. Since then, of course, I have come to understand the driving western norms, but I still feel a little insecure about people seeing my body hair, but I do what makes me feel beautiful and confident. I don’t think a unibrow would look beautiful on me, but it might on others, and I do like thickness in the brows. My brows represent my transitions.

We are pressured by social norms to look a certain way and we must embrace what we think is personally beautiful, which can mean so many different things. If one feels insecure about their arm hair and they want to remove, so be it. If someone doesn’t want to shave their armpit hair, so be it. Women can change the discourse surrounding hair and make it a conversation about supporting women in what they believe is beauty. Only by embracing this discourse, we can steer it away from patriarchal and Eurocentric norms.