sometimes i wish i could tell other women that you can just stop removing your body hair and in many cases the consequences will be way less severe than u expect. you can go to the beach with all your leg hair intact and nobody will stop you or say a thing. you can stop waxing your upper lip and people won’t stare at it the way u might be bracing yourself for. you can quit plucking your brows and eventually they will grow back into themselves and no one will even notice. like for sure women are punished for not participating in beauty rituals but i also feel like so much of it is like The Panopticon sometimes where you just convince yourself that if u stop that kind of gendered upkeep everyone will be mad and stop talking to u forever when in reality you just keep existing and nothing remarkable happens. it’s not always easy but you can kind of just stop for real
"Defining women as "adult human females" is so limiting"
Literally how? It's just defining the most basic physical traits, and you have complete freedom from there. "Adult human female" prescribes nothing about personality, interests, values, style, talents, skills, careers, or capabilities. Defining womanhood or non-womanhood as a feeling based on stereotypes of gender, meanwhile, is EXACTLY what I'd call "limiting."
i bet there were guys in the 1800s who were super fucking Reddit about everything, but no one had the right word yet for why those guys were so annoying. so they just had to wonder
Honestly similar experience here… I stopped shaving my legs maybe 2 months ago and it was weird and a bit unpleasant at first because the hair was kinda prickly when it was growing in, but it’s pretty much fully grown in now and it feels so soft!! I did used to like the feeling of freshly shaved legs against my bedsheets but I’ve kinda found a new obsession with being able to stroke my hands over my legs and feel the hair under my fingers, it makes me smile so big 😄 stopping shaving wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be!
okay, a preface here that i know the point of not shaving is NOT because it's sexy. i hate those articles about how "not shaving is sooo sexy actually 🥺🥺🥺". i hate when people try to make a NATURAL BODY FEATURE that women choose not to get rid of sexual, even though it's just...natural. normal. it's not sexual, it's our normal bodies.
with that said...yall! i officially stopped shaving, and while my leg hair is growing back reallllly slowly, my armpit hair is like full bush right now. and it...is so cool. like im not being one of those people making armpit hair a sexual thing, but genuinely, i feel...the word "pretty" isn't correct, but i feel right. like i feel natural, and im not thinking about it, but then i catch my armpit in the mirror and i can't help but smile! i dont know, something about it feels so cool and right. it's like, "hell yeah, im a mammal and this is how i look, and i look awesome!" like, something about my body looking the way it naturally looks has me feeling more confident + pretty + hot, honestly.
point here is NOT that being natural is 😩like tooootally hot 🥺. the point is: having a natural body actually does make you feel better! not altering or changing your natural body feels really good! it's like something in my brain clicked and remembered that this is how i'm meant to look, and when i let myself look natural i look really really good.
the point is, you won't feel disgusting if you stop shaving. i kinda thought my choice to stop shaving would make me feel gross or uglier. but it's done the opposite! if you choose to stop shaving, you won't feel gross or weird or ugly. you'll feel like a natural normal woman, and-just like me-you might even feel prettier and more confident with your body hair!
Why do radfems/terfs feel like that excluding non-cis women from their “correct definition of feminism” is something that,, is remotely acceptable? Considering theyre supposedly feminists?
jk rowling: congratulations idiots, you set the bar so low for women's rights that donald "grab em by the pussy" trump had no problem clearing it
everybody: wow i can't believe she's celebrating his achievements, she's a literal white nationalist
Keep on running up that hill, ladies.
Whats your unpopular radfem opinion?
Mine is that I do not get mad when radfems still wear makeup, especially if they’re cutting back on it heavily.
"I'm pretty with makeup"
"I'm pretty without makeup"
Radical feminism: "It doesn't matter if you're pretty at all. You don't exist to be pretty."
"Female body hair is okay"
"Female body hair is not okay"
Radical Feminism: "Female body hair simply exists and is completely neutral. Talking about whether its 'okay' doesn't even make sense."
"Presenting THIS way makes you a man"
"Presenting THIS way makes you a woman"
Radical feminism: "Nothing about the way you present makes you a man or woman. Gender isn't real."
I love that radical feminism just removes you from so many binaries of thought. It makes them completely nonsensical. Why would I analyze whether I'm pretty when it doesn't matter either way? Why is the acceptability of my body hair even a subject of discussion? It merely exists, just like the bark on a tree. Does society sit around and debate whether a tree ought to be able to keep its bark?
I've come to realize that I've been handed a ton of "either/or" choices about who I am all my life and told to make a decision on each one. And they were all illusions! I just exist. I never had to justify the way I am or even formulate an opinion on it.