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A 22-year-old woman is using her legs to make a point about the way we view female body hair in society.
It’s no secret that both men and women have hair all over their bodies. So why is it that women are expected to shave their legs, while men get sit back and relax?
Well, Naina Kataria is sick of being made to feel “gross” every time she doesn’t shave, and she’s using her legs to take a stand against men who think there’s something wrong with hairy women.
In an eye-opening poem, Naina, a writer, slammed the stigma against female body hair:
When a man tells me
I’m beautiful
I don’t believe him.
Instead, I relive my days in high school
When no matter how good I was
I was always the girl with a moustache
He doesn’t know what it’s like
to grow up in your maternal family
Where your body is the only one that
Proudly boasts of your father’s X
While your mother’s X sits back and pities
It’s unladylike-ness
He doesn’t know the teenager
Who filled her corners with
Empty consolations of
Being loved for who she was- someday.
He doesn’t know hypocrisy.
He doesn’t know of the world that
tells you to ‘be yourself’
and sells you a fair and lovely shade card
in the same fucking breath
He doesn’t know of the hot wax and the laser
whose only purpose is to
replace your innocent skin
with its own brand of womanhood
He doesn’t know of the veet and the bleach
That uproot your robust hair
in the name of hygiene
Hygiene, which when followed by men
makes them gay and unmanly
He doesn’t know how unruly eyebrows are tamed
and how uni brows die a silent death
All to preserve beauty
And of the torturous miracles that happen
Inside the doors marked
"WOMEN ONLY"
So when a man calls me beautiful
I throw at him, a smile; a smile that remained
After everything the strip pulled away
And I dare him
To wait
Till my hair grows back.
The stunning poem, which was posted on the Infinite Entropy Facebook page, has since been shared more than 10,000 times, with many women all over the world praising Naina for sticking up for hairy ladies everywhere.
While speaking with BuzzFeed, Naina revealed that the idea to write a body-positive poem came after an interesting date she had recently gone on.
Naina explained that:
I went out for a movie with a guy. We were watching this ad about razors for women when I remarked that celebrities shouldn’t endorse such products because it sends out a message that one HAS to buy them to look beautiful.
He replied by saying, “OMG you’re too much of a feminist.”
