Teen quits shaving, challenges 'gender taboo'
A UK university student has publicly challenged taboos on gender and body hair.
Liverpool’s Yasmin Gasimova’s hairy and she knows it. She also doesn’t care.
The 19-year-old used a blogto share photos of her armpits, legs and stomach – all with hair.
Ms Gasimova said she didn’t remember a time when she didn’t have body hair.
“As early as 10, boys were making fun of my moustache and I was trying to shave my noticeably hairy stomach,” she said in her post.
She said she decided to stop shaving and embrace her natural hair when she was 11.
“Having naturally thick, fast-growing hair meant I’d need to waste an hour just to get prickly dots on my legs, which would grow back in a week,” she said.
“It’s a huge inconvenience for me, as it never made me feel comfortable, gave me loads of ingrown hairs, and my hairless legs wouldn’t match the rest of my hairy body.”
She said she still did ‘some maitenance’ to her eyebrows but it wasn’t to avoid social suicide.
“If I do shave, which is very, very rare, it’s for absolute necessity,” she said.
“If I’m going on a beach holiday, having swimming lessons, or if I’m trying to pull a one-night stand, I’ll shave.
“I still unfortunately prefer the inconvenience of shaving to the inevitable dirty looks and rejection.”
Ms Gasimova said her choice was still far from being socially acceptable.
“We often associate hairy women with being lazy, unclean or an extreme feminist-cat-loving-lesbian,” she said.
“I dream of the day I can walk around in the summer in shorts, without being conscious of people judging me.
“It will, however, take many of my sisters joining me and ridding the public of the shock.”
Fortunately she said she’d discovered there wasn’t a lack of men who found a girl with a bit of excess body hair sexy.
“I am speaking from experience,” she said.
News break - May 29
