And the beauty of the current normative ideals means that if you prefer to shave you probably won’t get called out for it - it’s the norm, it’s the thing that women have been conditioned to do. However, people who choose not to shave, especially if they are female presenting people, well we get all kinds of crap for it.
I wrote a post on my blog about how I was going to do what I wanted with my leg hair (and my pit hair) and if that means I’m unshaven on a regular basis then so be it. Personally, I find shaving gives me ingrown hairs, itchiness and because I sweat a lot there’s nothing for the sweat to cling to so the sweat then goes all over my clothes. Marketing people basically created the market for shaven arm pits early last century too! This quote is from Todd Sampson on the Gruen Transfer:
[Marketing people] create the problem and make [people] feel self-conscious and have issues with self esteem when it comes to hair and then we solve that problem with a razor.
Asserting your right to shave, to do the normal thing, that’s cool and that’s completely up to you. My art isn’t about normal things, it’s about things that are considered wrong, bad or unattractive that really aren’t, and it’s about trying to normalise them or at least centre them in discussion.