Hair removal is an incredibly lucrative business. Every year women (and for several years some men too) spend billions of dollars getting rid of unwanted hair.
The strangest videos. (Scroll down to the article.)
The methods of hair removal are manifold: shaving, plucking, waxing, lasers and the use of foul-smelling creams promise smooth, hairless skin. The treatments offered are costly, mostly painful and irritating to the skin.
Women’s hair is only allowed to exist on the scalp, as eyelashes and as – carefully shaped – eyebrows, everything else is considered “disgusting”, neglected and, crazy, as unnatural. Body and facial hair is now so rarely seen that it appears unusual and strange. It is as if people have forgotten that once a woman no longer carefully removes hair, hair pops up on its own.
So why, it is often asked, do women do this expensive and never-ending agony? Social pressure is one answer, or also: For yourself, you just feel more comfortable hairless. A not unimportant reason for this hard-earned well-being is certainly the lack of stupid comments from unsolicited people.
Eldina Jaganjac from Copenhagen in Denmark can sing a song about such uninvited critics. The 31-year-old stopped removing her facial hair a year ago and gradually let her lady’s beard and eyebrows grow as she wanted.
In March 2020, she started leaving her hair alone and found that she didn’t feel bad at all with a lady’s beard and clashing eyebrows. Even without hair removal, she felt just as feminine and comfortable as before.
Total strangers on the street are less relaxed about it. Every time Eldina goes outside, she gets horrified looks, wrinkled noses and often derogatory comments. Men, whom she has never seen in their life, let alone asked for their opinion, tell her straight away, “Pluck it up!” – as if they were customers who complained angrily about a service that was not provided.
Not everyone has the composure to regularly expose themselves to such aggression. But Eldina finds the positive thing about such comments in an admirable way: “It helps to identify people very quickly with whom I would rather not be friends.” Such people now steer clear of them by themselves. The people in Eldina’s environment have so far reacted mostly positively to her changed appearance.
You can pluck your lady’s beard and shave your eyebrows, you can grow either or – like Eldina – both. It’s a very personal decision and nobody owes anyone a hairless appearance.
A face is not a service and excessive comments or even brazen commands are unacceptable. Pure politeness dictates that. Anyone who sees their sense of aesthetics hurt by a stranger can use a very simple tool:
If you don’t like it, just look elsewhere.
Thumbnail: © Facebook / Nogoyá Radios