the thing is is that you'll be like. 11 years old and someone will tell you that you have to shave your legs. either it will be your mum or a friend or a mean girl in the p.e. changing rooms telling you how gross it is that you have hair on your legs. so then you ask your mum about it and she says yep you have to take this razor blade and drag it across your skin under running water and just hope you don't cut yourself too badly and you have to do this every single week and maybe more frequently than that and you have to do that for fucking ever. the rest of your fucking life. because the hair that grows naturally on your legs is gross and ugly and people will laugh and boys won't like you! of course boys have hair on THEIR legs. but that's normal and even attractive and it's just not the same for you. and a few years later they'll say well you obviously should also be shaving your armpits. and then it's your arms and then it's that you have to wax your upper lip and pluck your eyebrows and ewww why do you have hair on your fingers and your toes.. you need to shave that too. and then suddenly you need to buy spray that will make invisible hairs on your face visible so that you can shave that too! and it's expensive and time consuming and difficult and it HURTS but they just say beauty is pain babe! and you're not allowed to say that maybe if beauty is pain then you don't actually want to be beautiful
and i'm so fucking tired of girls who do shave being defensive when this topic comes up because then i have to say well of COURSE it's your personal choice whether you want to shave or not! no offense! maybe it makes you feel empowered! you do it for YOURSELF! because that's bullshit and i actually DO think you should stop shaving your legs because it's not fucking empowering it's insane. if you give it more than a minute of thought it can't possibly be empowering. you're in a PRISON!!!!! and i was in the prison too okay and i know it seems hard to break out but i promise you it's not. and the more people we can break out of the prison the easier it gets for everyone else i swear to god. please
OBVIOUSLY we need to kill the social norm of requiring women to shave their everything and be as smooth as a plucked chicken at all times or else with hammers, especially since it's so deeply ingrained that people are out here acting like you can't remove it without killing the host. OBVIOUSLY the beauty industry is a bloated tick on the face of humanity and we need to systematically undo every bit of manipulation it's ever done & unlearn everything it's dumped into our unsuspecting brains. OBVIOUSLY if someone tells you need to shave or else then you tell them to fuck off. HOWEVER, Telling someone they CAN'T shave even if they want to is ALSO complete bullshit. "But it's a prison" girl my BODY is a prison to begin with and I'll defy it however I damn well please! "It can't POSSIBLY be empowering" What if I got body dysmorphia, have you considered that? What if I just hate how it looks and feels on my own even without a bitch in my ear telling me it's ugly? What if I just look in the mirror and say "this isn't me?" "But it's unnatural" nature is pure RNG and if I wanna undo whatever it rolled for me then I'll do whatever I need to to make that happen, even it's a weekly process! In short: if someone tells you you CAN'T shave your legs or else, you STILL tell them to fuck off.
