As it stands, I’m a butch dyke with leg and armpit hairs that haven’t been threatened with a razor since my senior year in high school, more than 25 years ago. And believe me, in the early 80s, it was quite the statement in my small hometown to be sporting the leg hair in shorts (I was a jock).

As I’ve gotten older, my father’s genetic legacy has begun to show itself on my face. For awhile, I had a single tuft of hair growing from my chin, off center unfortunately. I let that go for a few years and then got on a kick of waxing. I Waxed my chin and my upper lip. Left my eyebrows alone.

Now I’m not waxing, my mustache gets a trim occasionally but it’s fairly light reddish brown with a few grey hairs. The waxing seems to have slowed down some of the growth. If my chin would do something other than grow in funky patches, I’d be tempted to let it grow for a bit… I think it’d be a very nice reddish-brown with salt kind of beard — if my brother’s is any evidence. As it is, I pluck the occasional wild hairs that show up.

My girlfriend loves all my hairiness: mustache to hairy thighs and beyond, so if I want to do anything about body hair, it’s up to me and I try to be inner driven about it and not pressured by what I think others see and expect. This seems to be easier as I get older and have even more of an ‘F*ck off’ attitude than I had when I was younger.

For head hair, I like it short, above my ears and collar, with bangs. Can’t stand it in my eyes. I sometimes talk about cutting it shorter, or shaving it, but I get such the look from the girlfriend… and she checks every haircut for ‘grab-ability’.

It’s great to see so many people talking about this and examining their feelings and motivations about managing body hair. Like any body image subject, I think this acceptance is a process. Once you start on the path of self-acceptance and receive some positive feedback (internal and external), it’s easier to keep going. Maybe I’ll even come to accept the tummy pudge my girlfriend insists she loves.

i had long curly auburn body hair by the time i was a teen because i always have – i am french canadian and native american and i don't pretend to want to escape that.

growing up in the US (in the southeast – yeah i know) this faced some weird issues. my mother would not abide someone shaving above the knee (since that is dirty and all) and the problem that would give me as a teenager is that no matter how high i did shave there was always an OBVIOUS hairline.

i got enough crap for being the weird queer/intersexed/tranny/spacealien/wtf kid no matter how hard i tried to be obviously a girl (hated it the whole time). my nickname in middle school was 'elvis' because i had stylish blue suede shoes …and thick sideburns (long before the other little boys did).

when i dressed like a girl i wore long sideburns (like an anime character…because what else can you do with them that's remotely femme?) but these days i just shave them so they're clean at the bottom of my ear lobes. if i had more facial hair i would probably have a mustache also but since it has been in the suspended state of 13 year oldness since i was a 13 year old myself i usually try to keep it shaved. don't have much for 'beard' hair which is just genetics so shaving that would be pointless.

i DO shave my pits reasonably often because unlike one of the earlier posters i frankly smell terrible when i don't. but the rest of it – chest hair, bum fur and like all stays since it smells perfectly fine.

so that's a lot about my hair, but then again i have a lot of it! proudly! i was iffy on how proud i really felt about it for years until i spoke to a man i had known since childhood/teenage years and fallen out of touch with. he is a cisgendered canadian (also grew up in the US) that i have had a crush on for about ten years and he said to me that he always liked the fact that i didn't shave because it was authentically the way i am. and also that i have sexy sideburns anyway – this helped me get over myself quite a lot; just because some people might not like me for being myself well other people might like me more!

Alas, I have to remove my leg and face hair because I'm not out (I'm still at school and living at home), and in Argentina -where I'm from- women *can't* have leg hair, apparently. Maybe it's because most people over here are dark-haired, so body fuzz is more visible.

I do like to shave my underarms every day; otherwise I feel physically uncomfortable.

I'm trying to come up with other body-hair differences between the U.S. and Argentina, since you asked in the femme shaving post.

thanks for sharing. hearing others' perspectives helps me think through my own body hair issues. i'm cisgendered, i guess, in that i feel relatively comfortable with having a vagina, uterus, and breasts (or at least a penis doesn't sound much better :-) ), but I don't like to present as terribly feminine. (oh, and i'm attracted to men.)

so, introductions aside, sinclair's story about having a hard time being proud of her chest hair resonated with me. i started shaving my legs and armpits in middle school because everyone else was doing it, but in college i decided to stop, partly for convenience reasons and partly because i wanted to know what my body looked like in its natural adult-woman state. and i like it! … except for the fact that i'm scared to go out in public showing my hair. for the last three years, i've gone without shaving except for a few instances where the societal pressure was too much, and for all that time i've avoided shorts and tank tops where anyone but my close family is likely to see me. i even have occasional nightmares (though they've decreased in frequency somewhat) about being caught out in public in shorts or a bathing suit. it's not actually that much of an inconvenience to wear long pants, since i don't like to show a ton of skin, but on principle i want to get to the point where i feel comfortable going out in public in knee length shorts like a man would.

what seems strange to me about this is that i feel comfortable bucking certain other gender norms. i gladly gave up my teenaged flirtations with makeup and nail polish when i realized they were unnecessary, and never looked back. i don't have any inclination to wear skirts, jewelry, or high-heeled shoes. i've also been told i sit like a man. :-D

i love the feel of hair on my legs and actually get a comforting sense of naturalness (i.e. this is how things should be) when I feel it. and heck, my one sexual partner didn't say boo to it (although he didn't actively praise it either…)

in theory, it seems like my leg hair should be easier to accept than sinclair's chest hair, since chest hair between breasts is probably seen as more shocking than leg hair on a woman. but here i am, covering up my legs (not to mention selectively thinning my treasure trail). this turned into a post about me, but i really just wanted to agree that it's really hard to lose internalized notions of beauty, and that the hairless ideal of feminine beauty is *really* deeply entrenched in society — strangely so, considering how recently it became the status quo.

btw, !spark!, can i sign up for your girl scout camp? i wish i'd known about a place like that when i was younger!

i am a MtF post TS, and by god, that is fun………….

you go through all that painful crap to be you, and then you find out, the little secret.

yep, from 30 everyones body falls apart, the facial hair returns, have a b/f is a nightmare,

as they want to caress your face, ect,

but the great feminists i have met have taught me it is ok to let things be a little more natrual,

yep, then you start to notice others,

and are not ashamed to grow a little fur.

its a shame, but you talk of fighting to just being yourself.

i get the same trouble, people who have known me for a long time do not treat me as a full person,

i am gentle, placid, and need a little attention sometimes,

but everyone expects me to run around them, to make them feel good, even some special days that were supposed to be a little something for ME were turned into a pantomime and ruined by my freinds.

my parner is lovely, but never talks to me about personal things, he expects me to be the one making all the moves.

its just not in me.

it really is upsetting me.

deb xx

I went home and told my mom I wanted to start shaving. At first I was obsessed with the smoothness of my legs, and it led to the consequent shaving of arms and whole body to feel that sensation. Just the once though; the hair on my arms grew back prickly and darker, and it kinda freaked me out. No thank you! In reality, all my hair grew back darker, which meant that I felt I now had no choice now but to keep shaving it. And once I finished growing, tapping out at 6’ even, that’s a lot of time and many razors.

After college, I spend a few years where I was single in the winter, so I didn’t shave my legs because I didn’t see the point. In the summer though, I’d grow it out just long enough and then wax them. Needless to say… ouch!

Last year I met Cole, who didn’t shave legs or armpits, and in her self-confidence and body-positivity, I found the courage to stop shaving my legs; I’m much happier now. On top of looking more like a boy, it’s just a whole level of hassle I no longer have to worry about. At first I was concerned that my partners might be disgusted by it, but I’ve found that if I’m content with my body and don’t make a big deal of it, my partners don’t either.

Since dating V, who finds my hair sexy, I’ve come to terms with and grown to appreciate it on other parts of my body. I no longer shave my armpits, and I stopped attempting to bleach my happy trail. I do a little “butchscaping,” as Sin put it, but generally I’m happy to let my hair grow as it will. My best friend and I have a game we jokingly play called “# Months, No Months,” where we compare my body hair to his on x number of months on T.

The one place this doesn’t apply is to my face. I admire you, Sin, for shaving. I’ve thought about it a fair deal, but I admit, I’m still frightened of what might happen. Given the way the rest of my hair grew back when I shaved, I’m a little fearful that I could be opening to door to a shade and texture of facial hair I’m not ready for, and a whole new level of masculine presentation. For the time being, I’m just plucking my chin hair as it appears, and trying to learn to love that part of my body as it is.

As for the hair on my head, that evolution mirrored more my coming out process. When I was younger, the hair on my head was long, flowing almost to my waist, and even when it got shorter (mid back to shoulder length), it was either in a ponytail, plastered to my head, or in French braids.

I wanted to be an actress, so I always thought I couldn’t have short hair. I took advantage of a semester in London to finally chop it all off, and I’ve never gone back. The top stays a little long and messy, but my sideburns are painstakingly manicured, and the sides, so long as they’re clean around my ears, stay pretty short as well.

I actually go to a barber to get it done, which is occasionally a terrifying experience in and of itself. I’ve found it’s a new level of addressing my (dis)comfort with presenting in a masculine manner. For me, it’s negotiating the space of asking for a men’s haircut and being firm in that choice. Too many barbers have tried to make it a little more “girly.” I’ve had a number of run-ins with “that guy” who had one girlfriend with short hair back in the 80’s and now thinks her knows exactly what it is I want. And I’d be lying if I said I always stand up for myself in those situations. I don’t identify as male, and so sometimes I’ve sat back and watched a haircut happen that I wasn’t happy with, just because I didn’t feel I had the right to ask for a men’s haircut when I wasn’t a guy. I didn’t want to have that fight, and it seemed somehow disrespectful to my friends who are transitioning and had/have to go through the process of negotiating their sometimes less than traditional maleness every day.

http://nattnightly.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/long-...