Ooh, hirsute you, madam!
WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD ARE DOWNING THEIR RAZORS AND WAX STRIPS THIS MONTH - AND AS NICOLE MOWBRAY DISCOVERS, IT’S ABOUT EMPOWERMENT AND NOT JUST LOCKDOWN
WHETHER down to circumstance or choice, 2020 was the year that hair removal forgot. Salons were forced to close for months. Then, when they could reopen, many of us wondered whether we could face the expense, pain, close contact and faff involved in returning to be plucked, tweezed, threaded, lasered and waxed. Research from Mintel found that 51 per cent of beauty and personal care consumers felt a reduced need to be groomed as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. Fifteen per cent were removing body and facial hair less often. This echoes research from beauty app Cosmetify, which found that 45 per cent of women stopped buying razors and wax strips.
So will we ever go back? While these changes can be partly put down to lower disposable income, for some it’s just about a lack of will. Caroline Wright, 39, an accountant
from Brighton, confesses she falls into the latter category.
‘I caught a glimpse of my face in an illuminated magnifying mirror,’ she says. ‘I hadn’t looked at myself up close for months, as I haven’t been wearing much make-up, and was surprised to see the crop of hairs on my top lip and around my jawline.
‘Covid face masks have hidden a multitude of chin hair sins for me this year. I think the fact I’ve worked from home, haven’t been on holiday and have barely seen friends, let alone dated, has meant I’ve stopped being so self-conscious. Now I just don’t care very much.’
It’s a feeling 24-year-old Laura Jackson, founder of the Januhairy movement, hopes will continue after lockdown.
Since its launch in 2018, Januhairy has become a feminist movement, with 36,000 followers on Instagram. It urges women to grow out their body hair for the first month of the year – and possibly beyond – and encourages the sharing of hairy pictures to break down the myths around female body hair.
Laura’s epiphany came at a Women Of The World festival, where she was attending a talk on the politics of body hair.
‘I had begun to embrace my body hair but the whole of the talk was about removing body hair,’ she says. ‘After it had finished, the audience ended up having a discussion about the politics of body hair.
‘One woman said she believed if she turned up for work in a skirt without shaving her legs, her boss would have an issue with it. Another woman explained that she had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which can lead to increased body and facial hair. It started me thinking, why are we shaming ourselves?
‘J ‘Januhairy is liberating because it g gets you thinking about the wa way you treat your body and wh why you do it. We’ve long su suspected that women mainly reemove remove hair for other people, n ot themselves, and lockdown proves that.’
It’s a sentiment echoed by Instagram user Sonia Thakurdesai, herself a Januhairy advocate: ‘This conversation isn’t just about hair but about the broader issue of society controlling women’s bodies.’
Caroline says she’s unsure whether she’ll leave her facial hair
‘Covid masks have hidden a multitude of chin hair sins for me this year’
when she can go out on dates again but she’s definitely leaving her legs and armpits hairy.
Laura says: ‘It felt empowering and liberating to accept and love something about myself that I was shaming myself for. We’re taught this is what you have to do to be accepted as a woman. We need to stop passing that message on to other women.’
While Januhairy is based on selfacceptance, the campaign and its community continue to receive backlash.
‘I want body hair to just be normal so we don’t need a movement like this,’ says Laura. ‘The conversation is being had more among millennials than previous generations.
‘Maybe soon we’ll be at a point where people can just do what they want in relation to body hair and we won’t even need to talk about it. That would be something.’