I feel like there’s also a racialized element haunting the conversation around shaving that I haven’t yet seen anyone really address (at least on my dash, I’m sure people ARE talking about it in general because I cannot possibly be the first person this thought has occurred to). there’s like the very basic point that if you are someone who grows thicker, courser body hair then you will be more prone to painful ingrowns and shaving regularly will absolutely exacerbate this, it was a thing I dealt with for years when I was still shaving my body hair and having stopped doing that has been tremendously helpful for my bodily wellbeing. but also overall I do think racialized people (obviously especially racialized women) can be more heavily targeted by the pressure to shave. not even necessarily because of the claim that we are “naturally hairier” or whatever because that’s really not universally true and I don’t think it’s super helpful to parrot that. but in my experience our body hair, largely regardless of its appearance or quantity, is frequently treated as more unsightly and less acceptable than that of our white peers for any number of reasons. and I do think that should be part of the conversation around abolishing a culture of shaving. it was something that impacted my life from a very young age in a way that was markedly different from and often actively enforced by my white friends and classmates.
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