Editorial: Having a bush shouldn’t be a political statement, and yet it is

The night before I had sex for the first time, I waxed my minge with $8 wax strips from The Warehouse.  

Sneaking into my family kitchen while everyone was asleep, I microwaved the strips until they were burning hot. I put my leg up on the kitchen counter, spreading myself open, and placed a scolding strip on my bikini line. After a minute or so, I ripped it off in quiet pain. The strip only caught a few stray hairs, and my vagina was left angry and red.  

It’s somewhat funny to look back on. But as I squirm remembering my bruised bikini line, I can only blame the world’s disgust with women’s body hair for forcing that hot strip on me.  

Women of the 70s gave us a bush revolution, and now it seems we are having to revolutionise all over again. In the first issue of the first ever feminist magazine, Ms. Magazine, an article was published titled Body Hair: The Last Frontier. The article criticised the shaving norm as an “embodiment of our culture’s preoccupation with keeping women in a kind of state of innocence and denying their visceral selves”. It pointed to how infantilising hairlessness is and how women in their natural state are seen as gross.  

It’s gross when youth is demanded.  

Opinions on women’s body hair have gone up and down — but it’s still not normalised. Having it is seen as a political statement. So instead, almost every brand is still using perfectly hairless models.   

And when brands have tried to change the narrative — hair comes trouble.  

In 2017, H&M’s sister brand & Other Stories, released a lingerie line using what they called ‘real women’ as models. This was a stretch as most of the models were slim and pretty hairless. But some had armpit hair, scars, tattoos, and they weren’t all a size 4.  

But even this lame attempt at progressive advertising got shat on quickly. A large majority of comments on Daily Mail’s news article about the campaign read like an anti-feminist rally:  

“I will never accept armpit hair, never!!!” 

“Nothing more gross than a woman with underarm hair. YUCK.” 

“Diversity of beauty is just a euphemism for ugly right?” 

“Hairy women are a major, MAJOR turn-off... hairy doesn't make them "real women".”  

Many commented that the advertising discouraged them from buying the lingerie. Some were fine with the plus size models and tattoos, but they couldn’t get past the body hair. They said the models’ hair drew their attention away from the clothes.  

I can’t lie. If I saw a lingerie model with armpit hair or a bush, I would be distracted too. But this is something to reflect on: Why is body hair on women distracting?  

Because it’s foreign.  

I still shave my body, it makes me feel prettier. But that’s the thing – it shouldn’t. It’s concerning that it does. 

I shouldn’t feel unbeautiful in my natural state. And I shouldn't feel like a walking political statement if I have body hair.  

But it’s these patriarchal fears that pushed that $8 wax strip onto my body the night before a man first touched me.  

The fear that I would be a political statement on a mattress.