It’s been 26 years since Julia Roberts supercharged the body positivity discussion by rocking up at the Notting Hill premiere with hairy armpits.
It was a pivotal moment: one that inspired us to burn our razors (as it were) and embark on a proud new era for body hair.
It wasn’t quite body positivity, but it was certainly something: the inspiration for a whole generation of celebs (Drew Barrymore, Lady Gaga) to follow suit and attempt to make armpit hair a thing. Roberts’ move could easily have been the starting point for a revolution: a great reclaiming of female bodies, in all their hairy glory.
But was it? Body hair was supposed to be the last great taboo, smashed by feminism, just like we smashed the glass ceiling. And yet… it feels like progress has come to a halt. Worse, it feels like it’s going back entirely. Yes, body hair has never been so normalised. But it also feels like it’s never been so controversial.
I’m a young woman living in London, and yet I don’t feel especially liberated when it comes to showing off my own. When summer comes along, the razor comes out, and any glimpse of stubble is reason enough to swap skirts for jeans that day.
The same goes for most of my friends. These days, women are more relaxed about body hair than they used to be – but many of them still shave.
“I shave my pits every now and then when it bothers me,” Jasmine, 30, tells me. “I used to not shave them for a while and never felt ashamed but definitely noticed people staring more and my family made comments.
“I’m all for women not shaving but I feel like it does take a certain amount of bravery to show body hair. It still takes guts to do it and not feel judged.”
It’s not just body hair. If the late 2010s were characterised by body positivity, then the 2020s seem to be marking a turning point.
In 2018, a study showed that one in four women under the age of 25 had stopped shaving their armpits. Nike’s 2019 ad campaign showed Nigerian American model Annahstasia Enuke standing with her arm over her head, proudly showing off her armpit hair.
Billie, a body-care brand, made waves in 2018 with a razor ad that actually showed body hair; American hair care brand Fur launched in 2017 with a range of products specifically designed to care for body hair, including pubic hair.
And yet. Lizzo, once feted for her curves, is now on Ozempic, the catwalks have regressed too, with plus size models basically disappearing entirely. Celebrities like Adele and Emma Corrin, who have previously talked about not shaving, don’t seem to have impacted the fact that Hollywood is still predominantly white, skinny and hairless. I’ve not seen an advert displaying women’s body hair for years. It’s official: the body positivity movement has made a screeching U-turn and is heading back the way we came.
“I would almost posit that it's returning a little bit more to a hairless norm now than it was maybe five years ago,” Fur’s co-founder Lillian Tung says. “And that's okay. 99 per cent of people remove pubic hair and body hair at some point in their lives for a variety of reasons. There always has been and always will be an incredible amount of variety.”
Lately, though, people do seem to be edging back towards the razor. Maybe it’s due to the rise in ‘clean girl beauty’. Think Hailey Bieber (whose business Rhode peddles in much of the same), the Hadids, Kendall Jenner, sporting slicked-back buns, immaculate manicures and white t-shirts. This trend first appeared at the start of the 2020s and while it’s always been popular, it’s certainly never been as popular as it is right now: there are more than 500k ‘cleangirlaesthetic’ posts on TikTok, and almost one million ‘cleangirl’ ones.
Ripped tops, unbrushed hair and hairy legs: well, they’re still there. But they’re not leading the conversation right now. Instead, TikTok is awash with women going to Pilates classes, sipping matcha lattes and reading about tradwives. Plus OnlyFans, and its porn-esque aesthetic, is introducing a new generation to hairless bodies.
With Trump holding court in Washington, it’s not surprising that more traditional gender norms are reasserting themselves: the image the Republicans (and right wing governments more generally) tend to celebrate is that of the woman keeping house and getting dressed for her husband. That involves going hairless. After all, you can’t be a clean girl with body hair.
“Stuff like clean girl beauty or cottage core or luxury in the fashion space... I feel like a lot of these things seem very simple or innocent but in a way actually speak to the rise of conservatism and fascism that we're seeing, not just in the US but globally,” says Dominic Cadogan, the beauty editor at Glamour UK. “We've got Pete Davidson removing his tattoos, for example. I feel like all of these things exist under this umbrella of trends, that maybe speak to Gen Z’s interest in conservatism, whether they know or not.”
The right-wing takeover of the online space is ongoing. TikTokers like Estee Williams boast hundreds of thousands of followers and advocate for ‘traditional’ female values; the ‘clean girl’ trend is remarkable in its lack of diversity, spotlighting predominantly white, thin women doing their beauty routines.
For most people (including myself), hair-free is still king. “To my mind, there’s something about a woman being soft and smooth that’s appealing,” says Madeleine, 40. “I concede that this is probably the result of the patriarchy, but nonetheless I want to be smooth as a porpoise. Otherwise I feel... not myself. I actually really do feel terrible that this is such an ingrained attitude!”
It’s all the more discomforting given that we never got to the point where rocking hair became the norm, rather than the exception.
“Why has it never broken through to being the consistent way of defining femininity? Maybe no one wants to have one thing that's the ‘must do,’” Tung says. “If you do stand for gender inclusivity, do you want to be forced, to be like, ‘I must also always have underarm hair and a full bush,’ even if it does make me uncomfortable?”
She adds: “We hope to reframe body hair as something elegant and as a beauty decision like any other. But look, there are influences from the porn industry. From control of women’s bodies. These are definitely all underpinnings to this conversation that can't be ignored.”
Will this sudden shift towards the right (and, by extension, a hair-free life) last? Cadogan thinks not. “Beauty standards are never going to go away,” they say. “As much as we say that beauty has become a lot more inclusive than it was, five years ago. We're seeing with Ozempic: being skinny is coming back in.
“I feel like it's just a cycle. Just like being thin, body hair is another one of those beauty standards. I feel like the wheel will keep turning: maybe we'll see Gen Alpha or the next generation being more positive about body hair.” Here’s hoping.
