To Shave Or Not To Shave

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I’m wearing a skirt today. I recently pulled it from storage as a summer heat wave option. It’s a white, below-the-knee, straight pencil skirt in a stiff but stretchy fabric. It has a small slit in the back, which makes me feel a little like you might be able to see my underwear, but I’ve been assured that’s not the case, at least according to my husband and the mirror. I’m wearing it with an oversized black ASOS crewneck T-shirt, Adidas sneakers, white ankle socks, and recently shaven legs. I’ve been pretty lazy this summer about shaving my legs since I wear pants much of the time, and for some reason, my hairy legs don’t really bother me when I wear shorts. But I wanted to give this skirt a go as a break from my usual linen pants, and to explore how I feel in skirts in general, and I just didn’t like how it felt with hairy legs.

As I’ve been leaning more and more towards menswear, I haven’t had a skirt in my capsule wardrobe for some time. But there was this picture on Pinterest of a woman wearing a white pencil skirt with bare legs and a blush, oversized, chunky sweater. She carried a great straw bag and had black Converse on her feet, and her ensemble really spoke to me. I loved the light, neutral colors, the mix of masculine and feminine elements, the textures. And back when I first saw that picture a couple of years ago (my weight was down to around 160 then), I searched for those items for myself. I found an oversized blush cotton sweater from H&M for $10, and then I found this skirt at Boscov’s for around the same price. I remember trying on at least a dozen white pencil skirts, selecting just the right one.

But then I rarely wore the skirt. I don’t know if I was feeling precious about the white color or if it was just the ease of throwing on a pair of shorts, but I’m not sure that I ever recreated that Pinterest look. This summer, however, I’ve simply run out of options- my pants and shorts are pretty much all too big, most of my clothes in storage are still too small, and I’d rather not buy anything else at this weight knowing it will soon change again.

So today I put it on, and the jury’s still out on whether I like wearing it or not. It’s comfortable, but I do feel a bit exposed- like I have to keep my legs together and I can’t bend over at the waist without flashing someone. But the real conflict for me is the fact that I felt the need to shave my legs in order to wear it. I have been shaving my legs regularly over the last 20 years- but there was a time when I didn’t.

There were years in high school and college when I decided not to shave based purely on principle. I found the standard of hairlessness for women infantilizing and degrading. Why should women have to look like prepubescent children in order to be deemed attractive? And if men didn’t have to shave, why should we? As someone who had never had a professional haircut never mind a mani-pedi and a bikini wax, I found the decision to stop shaving not so radical, especially within my “hippie” minded circles. But as I finished college and started to look for work in the theater and in opera, I felt pressure to conform to traditionally feminine beauty standards. Wearing short skirts for auditions was considered an unfortunate reality of the business. I convinced myself that “it didn’t matter either way,” and started shaving again. I knew where my ideals stood, but I was dealing with the real world, so I went along with the grooming standards. And I never really stopped until this year.

It started as pure laziness in the winter season. But as more and more time went by and my leg hair grew out all the way, I began to question my own true preferences and ideals. Summer approached and I started wearing shorts, so I bit the bullet and shaved. But then this summer in Germany, I got “lazy” again. And I’m not sure I would have gone back to shaving- until I pulled out this skirt. It just didn’t feel “right” to me without a clean-shaven leg.

I think the question of whether or not to shave is one worth returning to. I’m no longer in the performing arts, at least not in the traditional sense, so I don’t have that to consider anymore. And my principles are really still the same as they were way back in high school. I’m still not interested in dressing for men’s approval, and I still find the socially-accepted standard of hairlessness for women infantilizing and conservative. So what am I doing in a skirt with shaved legs? I’m not sure. I guess I’m not ready to commit either way. I guess I’m playing around with what I feel comfortable wearing, and with whether or not I want to shave.

Apparently there’s actually a current hipster trend towards women accepting and showing their body hair. I’m not sure how much feminism has to do with it- it may be purely fashion. But it’s refreshing to see “the kids” questioning their options in terms of how they present themselves to the world. There’s even a brand of shaving products showing women with body hair in their ads. And so I guess everything old is new again. And it’s kind of nice to not be the only one questioning our expectations for women. Because while this trend is probably not the result of millennials reading Simone de Beauvoir, the issues it brings up are still the same: Who decides what I do with my body? And should society’s expectations for me have anything to do with that?