‘Every time somebody was disgusted, the embarrassment lessened’: Charlotte Cook on her bumpy highway to accepting physique hair

Charlotte Cook is a producer and journalist on RNZ’s Morning Report. Her podcast Hair and Loathing interrogates the connection she and different ladies have with physique hair, and is launched on March 14.

About 5 million hair follicles – that’s what number of every human physique is born with. Each follicle can develop a strand of hair, created and lovingly nourished by the close by blood vessels.

They then poke out of the pores and skin, prepared to begin their new life. An insignificant course of your physique does each second of the day, with out even making an attempt.

This identical insignificant course of consumed my life for nearly 20 years. I’ve been obsessing over these follicles because the second I knew what they had been. Every follicle, each hair, each millimetre longer it sprouted on my physique.

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The obsession began younger. I wore lengthy uniform socks into the summer time as a 9-year-old to cover my bushy legs. At 10 I keep in mind not desirous to do swimming any extra, as a result of what was I purported to do the hair out the aspect?

Bikinis had been definitely off the playing cards when lengthy darkish hairs crawled up my pale abdomen. Body hair for me got here with a deep disgrace, a secret reserved for my closest pals and a cry with my mum. It modified the best way I dressed, the actions I wished to do, and held me again from courting.

You is perhaps pondering “Whatever lady! How superficial, find a real problem.” But let me let you know that the period of time, power, emotion and bodily admin (HAVE YOU HAD A WAX?) that goes into it, simply to make your self slot in, or really feel womanly isn’t any small feat.

I felt I needed to rip out hair from virtually each a part of me to achieve what I believed was that “feminine norm”.

I at all times knew the sweetness guidelines I used to be adhering to had been bulls…, nevertheless it was simpler to associate with them than undo the layers of conditioning telling me that physique hair was gross, unfeminine and disgusting.

The older I received, the extra I turned snug with my physique, and this confidence was accompanied by a lingering thought in my mind – if everybody has 5 million hair follicles on their physique, that in all probability meant we had been purported to have some hair. I realised that I in all probability wasn’t alone in that thought or the one one fighting it.

When I first began investigating physique hair for my podcast Hair and Loathing, I discovered an professional who requested me why I used to be – my reply was easy “because I’m a hairy girl”. Immediately she challenged me. “According to what standard? What you see online? What you see on other women?

She reminded me that the women I judged myself against are also removing their body hair. If you are comparing yourself to a hairless standard, then any body hair you have will feel like a lot. If you are comparing yourself to a woman who does little or no maintenance – then maybe you will realise you’re not hairy – just normal.

Just normal.

It was at that moment – in the middle of making a podcast about the topic – that I decided I needed to be just normal for everyone else. I wanted to create a “normal” instance. I wished to be the lady I wanted after I was rising up.

That highway began with the considerably terrifying second of claiming goodbye to the razor, tweezers and all of the gizmos and devices – I used to be going au naturel child! I received off to a roaring begin, the breeze began to catch in my leg hair and I felt alive, filled with function.

The positivity disappeared fairly rapidly although – it seems centuries of lady being informed how they need to look is kind of tough to shake.

It received tougher to look within the mirror, I’d catch my ankles poking out of my denims and cringe deep in my puku. Skirts and clothes had been rotated out of my wardrobe and I spent lots of the time feeling ugly, unfeminine and really unpolished – like I’ll as nicely hand over showering and simply undertake slippers full time.

I’d turn into so entwined with how I used to be purported to look, that I didn’t know what a pure state was – and my social conditioning had taught me to hate each step of it.

This feeling of common urgh about myself existed virtually the entire method by means of recording the podcast, however I had a purpose to do it, Hair and Loathing was a science experiment I wished to win, I had a function. I wished to be the gold medallist for rising hair.

I’m ashamed to say that function truly gave me an out. When the questions got here “why are you even doing this?” or “That’s so gross” or when a person who merely walked away from me at a bar after I lifted my arm up, I used to be capable of say “oh it’s for a podcast I’m working on about women’s body hair.”

But steadily in these exact same moments the place I hid my embarrassment, I used to be reminded of why I used to be doing it. Body hair just isn’t embarrassing. Embracing your physique just isn’t embarrassing. Being small-minded and judging somebody for the place hair grows is.

Every time somebody was disgusted, the embarrassment lessened – it was changed by energy, by possession, by a way of taking again my physique. Each hair was mine, and I grew it myself and it was badass.

It’s virtually been a 12 months now since I first ditched that razor. Not all of my 5 million follicles received to remain flourishing, though I definitely am somewhat extra haphazard with my elimination routine. I’ve nonetheless received bushy armpits and a visual snail path. How I really feel about them adjustments every day, there’s no proper reply – or easy resolution, however I’ve stored them nonetheless.

While I nonetheless haven’t learnt to just accept the sprawling development up my tummy, my armpits are my pleasure and pleasure, they could possibly be on a god-damn shampoo business they’re so good. Those. They are my gold medal, they’re my reminder to be the individual I wanted after I was younger.

Hair and Loathing is sort of like a love letter to younger Charlotte, however maybe, you would possibly see somewhat little bit of your self in that letter too.