‘Tis the season to get fuzzy, my female friends. That’s right: No-Shave November does not belong to the boys anymore. Now is the perfect time to break out your inner hippie-European woman and see if she could be your new role model.
There are several reasons why your cave-woman side is entirely embraceable (in spite of the slight prickle).
For starters, the boys are doing it, and, in the spirit of equality, so should you. Men complain about having to shave their faces while women spend the whole year scraping their fuzz off of 60 percent of their body surfaces. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott would be downright ashamed of us. They worked to get us equal voting rights and we pay them back by becoming slaves to the razor and the smooth, perfectly shaved leg? No, thank you. Liberate yourselves, accept your inner (well, outer) furriness and move on.
Secondly, November makes the perfect No-Shave month, and not just because of all of the creative name possibilities (Noshember, Novembeard, etc.). It’s getting cold, so there are few chances to wear that little black anything. There are no serious parties that encourage dressing up, like New Year’s Eve. Finally, it’s the last drag before finals and that means frantic studying and paper writing are more important than that silky smoothness.
If you are worried that guys might notice it and be turned off, fear not. If beards can be sexy, then so too can hairy legs. Who wants silky smoothness in winter when you can have sweater-like texture under those jeans instead?
Constant shaving scrapes off the surface of the epidermis, which can encourage irritation, infection, and acne. Giving your skin a month or even just a week to regroup can have a number of benefits. Additionally, as most women know, the more you shave the faster and thicker hair grows back. Ideally, No-Shave November can lead to Shave-Once December.
Moreover, most body hair grows more during the winter months in order to keep your body nice and toasty. So let it. Hair has numerous purposes, from keeping you warm to protecting your private bits from the nasty outer world.
In all seriousness, the beauty industry is one of the largest and hardest to defy. They set the standards that determine what society buys, and they sell it too. Some estimates say that American women spend an average of $12,000 a year on beauty supplies such as razors and other hair removal products. All this money is spent because the fashion industry makes it almost impossible for someone to realize, “Damn, I look good with a hairy armpits.”
But there it is. Other women hold us to standards created by a faceless industry that does not sanction body hair, and so we spend money in order to fit into this contrived model of prepubescent hairlessness.
November offers an opportunity to defy this crappy set of standards.
The whole idea of No-Shave November is to embrace the idea of putting schoolwork and other things before excessive personal hygiene—and not be judged for it. So, ladies, let’s get fuzzy.
