The great summer debate: To shave or not to shave your body hair

Peeling off the layers during summer brings up the age-old question: To shave or not to shave our body hair. Should we join the ‘all-natural’ sisterhood or suit ourselves?

Research showed 26% of women aged 16-24 felt they should shave their armpits, compared to 64% of women over 60. Picture: iStock

IT’S (technically) summer, and again, we ask the annual question — to shave or not to shave? I say ‘we’. I mean women, who are expected to follow the hair rules: Obligatory on your head, unwanted everywhere else. But unwanted by whom? Patriarchy? Capitalism? Yourself, having internalised the other two?

First, let’s be clear — we all do it to some degree. Dr Breanne Fahs, author of Unshaved, writes that “Between 92% and 99% of women in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Western Europe regularly remove their leg and underarm hair, while from 50% to 98% of women report that they removed some or all of their pubic hair.”