#bikini line

I grew up super ashamed of my body hair. It was thicker than most women, thicker than many men’s even. Thick and wiry, it hurts like hell when it regrows. Itches like crazy. Every single time. Shaving bumps are pretty much impossible to avoid when I try for a clean shave. And I’m prickly within hours.

So why did I shave when it was basically a never ending battle between me and my body hair??? Wasting countless hours in the tub every night, only to be filled with razor burn and stubble just hours afterwards when I woke up in the morning?

Disgust and shame.

I’ve had friends coil back in disgust after touching my legs that were shaven just last night, talking about how it feels so sharp like glass. Things like this were a common occurrence. Not to mention the constant messaging from the media that smooth, bare legs are the pinnacle of beauty, and that rough, hairy legs like mine are naturally are disgusting.

I finally got over my hatred of my body hair when I grew it out during covid. My leg hair was crazy thick, almost just as thick as my Italian American brother’s. So much thicker than the average man’s.

My family was not as accepting about my new acceptance of my body hair, though, and my mom gifted me some laser hair removal. It felt like a micro aggression to be honest. Due to my shame, frustration, and pain caused by shaving, I had begged for laser hair removal during my teen years, but my mom always (rightfully) told me that we couldn’t afford it. When I finally accepted my hairy legs enough to stop shaving, suddenly my mom was able to find enough money for laser hair removal? It made me feel like she found my legs disgusting enough to do something about.

But I went along with it anyways, so now it’s not quite so thick. Still sucks to shave, but now there’s a lot less hair follicles, so it sucks a lot less.

I’d still say that even after laser hair removal, I’m hairier than the average woman. But maybe not hairier than the average man, now.

Except now, I feel comfortable with my body hair. I go out in public in shorts unashamed of the stubble on my legs. Gone are the nightly shaving torture sessions, now I go weeks in between shaves. So often, it’s not just stubble on my legs, but long, grown out, thick wiry hairs. But I wear them in public just the same without a thought to what anyone thinks.

So that’s how I learned how to accept my body hair. Exposing myself to it first in the privacy of my own home. Making friends with it. Then, when I was ready, exposing the world to it. Not everyone received my hairy legs kindly. For example, I ran into a friend’s mom (who was also my 9th grade English teacher) when my legs were at the height of their hairiness, before I had gotten laser hair removal.

I thought I noticed some surprise and disgust from her when she saw my legs, and later, when I told my friend about it, she confirmed that her mom had talked about it to her.

At the time, her reaction kind of bothered me. But now I pity her. How sad is it that a 50 year old woman STILL isn’t able to see through the brainwashing that the patriarchy as well as the capitalist beauty industry has forced upon her? That she still hates body hair enough to not be able to hide her disgust when she sees it on the body of one of her daughter’s friends, one of her students? Very sad.

You’re going to run into uncomfortable situations like this one if you do something like this. After all, the world is just as conditioned to hating women’s body hair as you are. However, the difference between a healthy, well adjusted woman like me who is able to love herself despite the world trying to convince her she’s disgusting, and a bitter, judgmental old lady who makes everyone around her including herself insecure like my friend’s mom, the difference between us lies in our reaction to the world’s judgments.

Most American women face very similar judgements. You have to be skinny, but also curvy. Not TOO skinny, not TOO curvy. You have to have flawless skin, look pretty without makeup on. You have to be hairless, blemish free, soft, smooth, sweet, and more. So much more. And you have to do it all effortlessly, or else you’re a try hard, high maintenance, bitch.

I hate to say it, girls, but you can’t change the world. The average American is going to hold all of those same, toxic beliefs about women as pushed onto us by the media. Perhaps they’ll hold even more, niche ones that you don’t even know about. Perhaps they’ll think you’re disgusting because your thighs touch instead of having a gap in between them, or whatever bodily micro trend is popular right now. Of course, I’m talking about men, but also women, too. Women, too will enforce these unfair beauty standards. Often, they’re the harshest enforcers of all. Self hate is often stronger and louder than misogyny. It’s more personal.

This isn’t a story of how my hairy legs suddenly became beautiful and accepted by the world. This is a story of how I learned to accept my hairy legs as they are, without needing the world’s approval and admiration to allow myself permission to love my hairy legs.

Maybe people still find my hairy legs disgusting. If they do, I haven’t noticed in a really long time. Gone are the days when I’m so uncomfortable with myself that I’m on the lookout for people who are disgusted by the things I’m insecure about. And that makes it a lot easier to not notice them, to prance, no, STRUT, through life without a care in the world.

That doesn’t mean that some people don’t find my legs disgusting, though. But now I realize that I don’t need anyone to be pleased by my legs. Now I realize that I don’t even WANT random men on the streets to lust after my smooth hairless legs. (Men on the streets will lust after ANYTHING, though, so unfortunately, my hairy legs don’t stop them). I don’t need even normal, woman respecting men to lust after my hairless legs, either. My body does not exist for the pleasure of others. Maybe that’s easy for me to say, after all, I’m basically a lesbian. But my body does not exist for the pleasure of ANYONE, not men, not women, not even my partner, not even myself.

My body is just a body. It houses my consciousness, holds all my organs, does other things. Idk I’m not a doctor. My legs are just legs. They get me from point a to point b. They’re tools that help me do things.

And my body hair is just hair. It simply exists. The fact that it exists indicates that maybe there’s survival benefits to the body hair, I don’t really know them well enough to list them.

And my body is not the only woman’s body to grow a lot of thick, wiry, dark hair. It’s a lot more common than you think. It’s so easy to assume that just because most of the girls around you don’t struggle as much with their body hair, that means you’re alone, a freak with some kind of issue like testosterone imbalance or something.

No, even if it’s irregular in your social circle, that doesn’t mean it’s irregular on a global scale. It just means that maybe, the majority of people around you come from backgrounds where body hair isn’t as thick, Anglo Saxon, or East Asian, or something like that.

There’s plenty of ethnicities that ARE naturally hairy, though. Italian, Indian, Persian, Arab, these are just a few ethnicities I can name off the top of my head that have a reputation for having hairier women.

It’s not a design flaw if an entire population shares a common trait. It’s likely an evolutionary adaptation to some environmental condition that actually helps those women prosper.

And another thing: the very existence of your hairy legs indicates that there were woman ancestors who came before you who were just as hairy as you, who someone found sexy enough to fuck and make a baby. Even if your hairiness comes from your dad’s side, there’s hairy women on his side who were fucked to make him, or his grandfather, or his great grandmother, and so on and so forth. Not that the point of your hairy legs is to make you fuckable, but we’re all human, and it’s a human urge to want to fuck and be fucked, so don’t worry, hairy legs are fuckable, too.

I told you the story of how I learned to accept my hairy legs, now let me tell you the story of how I came to find my hairy legs fuckable.

I love porn. Not the porn industry, and not the male gazey porn, no. But some nice, raw footage of some amateurs fucking passionately and lovingly??? Sign me up.

I have a couple favorite porn stars, but the most special one to me isn’t a star. She goes by the stage name Luna Silver for her lesbian porn, and I think Aaeyesha for her straight porn??? I don’t know, I’m into the lesbian porn obviously.

I believe Luna silver is Persian (forgive me if I’m wrong, I thought I read that somewhere). The first thing I really loved about her was her amazingly thick eyebrows, her beautiful curly hair, her beautiful eyes, teeth, nose, and smile.

Here’s a photo she posted recently on her Instagram to illustrate her insane levels of beauty.

You don’t really see women as beautiful as Luna Silver much in porn. Yeah, you see plenty of very hot and sexy women, but Luna Silver is beautiful in a unique way, a way you’d see more among actresses and models than among porn stars.

So that’s what first got me interested in her. The second thing was her cute voice and personality, which I was able to experience because thankfully ersties makes some really high quality porn that isn’t so male gazey, and it includes interviews with the women before the porn starts to give you some emotional context for the porn.

But little did I know that my new porn crush was going to heal my body hair insecurity. Because even though I accepted it, I thought the best that could happen for me was that I was able to find a partner who tolerated it and accepted it like I did.

Toleration and acceptance is not love. This is cheesy, but Taylor Swift’s song Tolerate It actually does a fantastic job of illustrating that. Toleration certainly isn’t lust.

And I’m the type of girl who likes to be lusted after by the RIGHT people. Not by any men, no, not by just any woman, but I REALLY want to turn on the woman I love. Really any woman who turns me on, I feel a natural urge to want to turn her on. I’m only human.

So my attitude towards my hairy legs of simply tolerance was not enough for me. I needed to lust after them. Feel turned on by them.

And that’s where Luna Silver comes in. In most of the videos I’ve seen of hers, she keeps her body hair natural and unshaven. Pubic hair, leg hair, arm hair, armpit hair, even belly hair.

This is actually the first time I ever saw belly hair on a woman in porn. And the funny thing is, it turned me on. I didn’t tolerate it about Luna Silver. I found it sexy as fuck. I wanted to touch it. Feel it. Fuck her with it on her. Appreciate her as she is. Body hair and all.

Thank you Luna Silver, for the natural haired porn that you made. It healed me. I needed to experience lusting after a hairy woman to be able to lust after my own hairy body.

Those people who say porn is ruining people are wrong. Yeah, the wrong kind of porn consumed in the wrong way can give a person some psychological issues. But that doesn’t mean all porn is bad. Porn like ersties helped heal my own insecurities. We need more representation in every aspect of media, even porn. We need fat woman porn, acne woman porn, average woman porn, hairy woman porn. We need to see that every body can be pleasured and can bring their partner pleasure. Because nothing is inherently good or bad. Nothing is inherently sexy or disgusting. That’s all just some cultural nonsense that society filters everything though.

So yeah, anything you feel insecure about, I’d suggest first coming to accept it by exposing yourself to it. If you’re fat, you can start by appreciating fat women fashion influencers on Instagram. Then you can start putting on a cute outfit and looking in the mirror at yourself, learning to love yourself as you are.

Then you can showcase your insecurity to the world, a little at a time. It’s going to be hard, people will judge you and give you a hard time. You’re going to get discouraged, feel bad, embarrassed, and insecure. But keep on exposing your insecurity until it no longer hurts as bad. One day, it might not hurt at all.

But don’t stop there, learn how to lust after your insecurity so that you can realize that your insecurity will actually turn the right people on. The way I did that was by watching lesbian porn with hairy women in it. You might not be sold at first glance the way I was with Luna Silver. That’s okay, keep watching. Find more examples, as many as you can. Try to find what is beautiful about the woman, even if you still feel disgust about her hairiness or her fatness or whatever insecurity of yours you see on her. Find what is sexy about her despite her hairiness first if you have to. Then little by little, start trying to see sexiness in the hairiness. You’d be surprised how sexy it can be.

Straight women: I’m sorry, I think this approach WILL be easier for queer women than it is for you. Queer women already find women sexy. However, I don’t think it will be impossible for you to do this approach, and I think it will still be worthwhile. Just a little harder, and it might take more time. That’s okay.

Even if you’re disgusted by vaginas, open your mind. I was so disgusted by vaginas when I first started watching porn, that I would physically cringe when any shot focused on a vagina. And I’m a lesbian. I learned over a course of a long time to appreciate vaginas and find them sexy. But you don’t even have to find vaginas sexy to benefit from this approach. It’s more, if you can appreciate the beauty of a woman, have a girl crush, then you’re capable of seeing women as sexy even with your insecurity on her. Maybe you won’t need porn to be able to see your insecurity as hot. Maybe just Instagram photos of women with your insecurity will work. But don’t rule out porn just because you’re not a lesbian. Plenty of straight women enjoy lesbian porn. It’s often more focused on women’s pleasure than straight porn is.

Anyways, I really hoped this helped you hairy girls like me out. Please leave comments and stuff with related stories and experiences related to accepting your insecurities. Or even about being shunned for your insecurities and how that felt. Let’s uplift and support each other.

Also, I fully realize that the photos I posted of my own legs are not at all hairy. However, these specific photos are significant to my story because my pubic hair was peeking out of my bikini bottoms.

I was spending a weeks vacation at the beach, and it was that time of the week that not a bikini in the world could hide what was happening with my bikini line. And not a razor in the world could chop the thick wiry hairs down. So my options were to wear some shorts or wear my pubic hair proudly.

This was earlier this summer, and I had already learned to lust after my body hair, MOST ESPECIALLY my pubic hair, but I was still embarrassed by pubic hair peeking out of bikini bottoms in public. It felt a little crass and awkward to me, still.

But that day was the first day I was able to see my bikini line as what it is: hair. End of story. It’s not crass, unsightly, anything to hide or be ashamed of. No need to cover it up for the sake of you or others. It’s fine the way it is.

And actually, I took those photos because my own hairy bikini line was actually turning me on in that moment. So who knows, maybe those photos can turn you on, too. If you’re a woman who hates her own body hair but is turned in by my photos of my own pubic hair above, PLS PLS PLS share that information with me. It would make all my struggles totally with it, because it helped another fellow struggler out, too.

And also I’m kind of an exhibitionist and it’s hot as fuck to be appreciated by women.