Something
you may not know about me is that I have a ton of body hair. For most of my
life, it’s been my biggest insecurity. After years of painstaking hair removal
and perpetual self-consciousness, I decided enough was enough and stopped
shaving last fall. I felt that the only way I’ll ever be able to reach inner
peace about my body was to let it exist in its natural state and let go of the
fear of being scrutinized. After almost a year, I’ve grown to genuinely love my
weird hairy bod. I feel like I was meant to be hairy and my legs, arms, belly, back, butt, armpits, toes, etc, etc, don’t look
right without a layer of fur.
Now I’m
trying to work on taking my internal confidence and projecting it outward. As
much as I like my hair, I’m still constantly worried about what others think of
my appearance. I feel very self-conscious whenever my body hair is visible in
public, and I’ll admit that sometimes I get the urge to shave it all off so no
one will whisper about me as I walk by. I’m afraid of being ugly in the eyes of
strangers and that fear holds power over me, but every day I’m phasing the fear out a little more. I took these pictures to celebrate my cute fuzz, but
also because showing close-ups of (some of) my imperfections to an audience will help me
to let go of my self-consciousness even more.
High
self-esteem is freedom and we deserve nothing less than that. It takes a long
time and a lot of mental work, but it will all be worth it when I can wear a
swimsuit in public with hair all the way up my thighs and not give a fuck. This
is my advice: fight the forces that tell you that you are unworthy if you don’t
change your appearance. Fight your personal demons. Know that there is power in
being ugly and being okay with it. Take beautiful, vulnerable pictures of
yourself and post them on the internet. Do what you need to in order to feel
content with yourself, and don’t be hard on yourself if you haven’t reached
that point yet. Remember that you are amazing always.
Love,
Allison
