I grew up studying in an all-girls school. Though I resented it a lot during the time I was a teenager (no male-female interaction, duh), I have come to realise that there were several things I didn’t have to worry about. Forgetting to carry a sanitary napkin wasn’t a nightmare and body hair was as normal as breathing. However, later I found myself and my friends feeling terrible about having body hair, even when my hair growth was minimal. Why? Because magazines, beauty advertisements, and societal gaze can be really toxic.
If you think that girls are “supposed” to have smooth clear skin like vanilla ice-cream with absolutely no body hair and eyebrows shaped like wings of a phoenix, let me give you some inside details:
1. Hair removal creams smell gross.
2. Shaving leaves us with scratches that itch till we bleed.
3. The wax gets hotter and the thread sharper every time we visit the parlour for some waxing and threading, and its painful AF.
But we are still expected to go through all that pain because we are shaped into thinking that that’s what women are supposed to do. So when Malaika Arora recently posted a picture of herself with visible hair on her armpits, the world lost it.
In the past, we saw Priyanka Chopra getting heavily trolled for having crystal clear armpits. So are you saying we can’t have hair and also clear armpits? I’m kinda sensing double standards.
Now, male celebrities do not have this problem. They can flaunt their hairy chests and armpits all they want and people will instead shower them with heart emojis and magazines will feature them on their covers.
- Burt Reynolds on the Cosmo cover!
People are talking about Malaika Arora's armpits as if it's my fav Burt Reynolds odalisque for Cosmopolitan. pic.twitter.com/u7AiEnfIp1
— Nisha Susan (@chasingiamb) May 30, 2019
2. I bet you drooled over Ranveer Singh when he flaunted his armpits.
3. And you didn’t even notice Shahid Kapoor’s armpits because you were so engrossed with his killer smile!
4. Remember this humongous amount of hair that didn’t stop Anil Kapoor from making it to the silver screen.
5. Even if Bradley Cooper had gorilla hair, you’d still drool over him.
6. Chest full of hair made these two studs.
Nostalgic… @iamsunnydeol @duttsanjay #True Legends#Screen Presence Unmatchable. An audience deserve to see them together once again. @aapkadharam @BeingSalmanKhan pic.twitter.com/yxSXiat0IR
— Saurav Singh (@SauravSun) May 30, 2019
7. And Varun Dhawan’s armpits only increase his sex appeal!
8. Pretty sure everyone’s attention was on Hrithik’s muscles and not his armpits.
The saying ‘aap kare toh disco, hum kare toh mujra’ never felt so relatable!