Hair. Leg hair. Sophomore Laura Passarelli smiles as she rubs her fingers lightly over her shin. \u201cIt\u2019s fuzzy,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it feels natural.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laura\u2019s hair, which has grown four months without blade, wax, or cream applied to it, is hardly noticeable. As she sits on a couch in the Dorsey living room, she is completely comfortable with her legs, which look natural. Her demeanor is easygoing, her body language ca\u00adsual. Instead of staring at her legs, you focus on her face and the way she casually wraps her hands and wrists around her legs, neither displaying nor hiding them, but, rather, letting them be a natural extension of herself. After all, her legs are a part of who she is.<\/p>\n
Laura\u2019s decision to let her leg hair grow developed from her final project in Core II: Femi\u00adnist Theory of Body, Yoga, and Dance, which exam\u00adined how American society views bodies, how they move, and what messages about the body are projected by the media. Her project, in conjunction with Hailey Hartford (\u201912) and Jesse Klekamp (\u201912), consisted of dissecting television advertisements for shaving products for women and men and analyzing the messages they project.<\/p>\n
While one men\u2019s Gillette ad insists that their razor is \u201cthe best a man can get,\u201d implying that the man chooses the razor, a Venus ad tells women that they can \u201crelease the goddess within\u201d only by relying upon their razor. Laura felt that the Gillette Fusion razor was complimentary to men\u2019s pre-established confidence in a society that favors the white male, adding to their natural masculin\u00adity, while the Venus razor emphasized that women had the potential to become feminine, even god\u00addesses, but could not reach that point without the razor. She says, eyes flashing and hands out for em\u00adphasis, \u201cIt felt as if these ads were saying that I was not okay the way I was already.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laura believes that individuals must de\u00adcide why they shave, and that it should be an au\u00adtonomous decision and not because of social con\u00adstraints. She understands that some women like the feel of shaved legs or dislike body hair, amongst a multitude of other reasons, but she feels that a woman should shave for herself, not to please her partner or conform to societal expectations.<\/p>\n
Laura looks down at her legs. \u201cI\u2019d shave and then touch them, and it wouldn\u2019t feel like me I was touching,\u201d she says. In her last relationship,<\/p>\n
she always made sure she shaved her legs before seeing her boyfriend. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t,\u201d she adds, \u201cI would feel self-conscious and ashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShame is something you\u2019re not respon\u00adsible for, because it\u2019s when other people tell you that you\u2019re not right the way you are. I didn\u2019t want to be ashamed anymore because I hadn\u2019t shaved.\u201d Before she stopped shaving her legs, Laura won\u00addered where it would be acceptable to have leg hair. In a more lasting and involved relationship, such as one with a spouse, she wonders what ar\u00adeas of her body she would leave unshaved. \u201cI don\u2019t want there to be any part of my body that I can\u2019t accept.\u201d<\/p>\n
The notion of shaving is so gendered, and Laura says that all she could think about while shav\u00ading was how everyone was go\u00ading to look at her legs and how hot they would be. At the end of her Core II course, she de\u00adcided to stop allowing herself to feel ashamed, and along with that, she stopped shaving. She decided not to shave again until she got over the shame, and then, if she wanted to start again, she felt it would be her decision completely.<\/p>\n
In her estimation, unshaved legs are no embarrassment, and she is now less critical of her body in general. \u201cMy legs are fuzzy and nice. I like the way they look \u2013 my legs are Laura-legs!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beginning was difficult,\u201d Laura remi\u00adnisces. After a few weeks of letting her hair grow, Laura was at work at a children\u2019s educational camp when a five-year-old student wanted to draw on her with face paint. The counselors had already let the students draw on them, and Laura\u2019s face and arms were covered. However, she still had space on her legs. \u201cI hesitated for a moment, still feel\u00ading a bit of shame and wondering if the student would notice my hair.\u201d Nevertheless, Laura stuck her leg out so that the student could scribble on it. \u201cShe didn\u2019t notice. At five years old, the children in our society have not yet been primed to respond to hair or hairlessness; to them, hair is completely natural, so why shouldn\u2019t it be so for me, too?\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, as Laura continues not to shave her legs, she no longer feels ashamed about her hairy legs. She accepts them as natural and feels that her legs are hers completely. \u201cThey\u2019re not on dis\u00adplay for anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hair. Leg hair. Sophomore Laura Passarelli smiles as she rubs her fingers lightly over her shin. \u201cIt\u2019s fuzzy,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it feels natural.\u201d Laura\u2019s hair, which has grown four months without blade, wax, or cream applied to it, is hardly noticeable. As she sits on a couch in the Dorsey living room, she is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,233],"tags":[107,108,110,25,109],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature","category-vol-2-issue-1","tag-hair","tag-laura-passarelli","tag-legs","tag-liz-lyon","tag-shaving"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}