Body hair

When I was about fourteen, I suddenly became aware of the hairs on my stomach. In my mind they were too dark, too thick, too noticeable. All my friends seemed to have those perfect flat stomachs with soft, barely-there hairs that caught the sunlight in a pale golden glow. That was what I wanted too.

So I started experimenting. I bought a jar of Jolen bleach and carefully spread it over my skin. It burned like crazy and hardly did anything at all. The hairs stubbornly stayed dark.

Then I discovered the razor. In my naïve teenage logic, I thought: if I shave it once, that will be the end of it. No more dark hairs. Problem solved.
But the opposite happened. They came back — darker, thicker, more visible than before.

And ever since, I find myself reaching for a razor almost every day to shave those dark hairs away.

It’s kind of silly, really. Because why do I still do it?

Because somewhere inside me lives the fear that people will notice.
That people will judge.
That men will judge.

And sometimes shame grows more stubbornly than hair.