With a new year and a new decade upon us, many of our resolutions will already be in full swing. Whether that’s taking part in Dry January or going cold turkey for Veganuary – whatever the label, the new year is a time for a fresh start.
For many women this will mean taking part in Januhairy - the global feminist movement encouraging women to ditch their razors, lasers, tweezers and wax and grow out their body hair for charity.
Founded last year, the campaign now boasts a global following as a growing number of women are keen to embrace their natural hair. For founder Laura Jackson, Januhairy is all about dismantling the myths around female hair which many women feel bound to.
“There are so many societal pressures on women on how to look and how to be perfect, and shaving is a big part of that,” Jackson says. “[Januhairy] is so liberating because it really gets you thinking about the way you treat your body, why you do it and who you do it for.”
Jackson founded the campaign in her final year studying Drama at the University of Exeter after growing out her hair for a performance about body image.
“For the first couple of weeks of growing it out I felt very uncomfortable. It was the hottest time of the year and I was wearing black jeans and long sleeve tops so no one would see anything. Anytime someone would see something I’d say: ‘I’m doing this for a show, I’m not actually a hairy person.’
“After a while it felt so empowering and liberating to accept and love something about myself that I was shaming myself for” Jackson says. “Growing my body hair and accepting that part of myself was such a huge eye opener, not only to the taboo of body hair on women but also how I view my own body, and I started to love every single part of me. And it is such a huge challenge loving yourself every single day, but it’s such an important thing to connect to yourself.”
This sparked the idea to create a community which encourages women to embrace their bodies in their natural hairy state. “I thought some women might need that incentive like I did. I had a goal, and then I could choose to do what I wanted afterwards.”
While Januhairy is based on self-acceptance, the campaign and its community continue to receive backlash from those who reject its body positive message.
“At the beginning of the campaign I left all those comments up, even the horrible ones, because it showed why we were doing this campaign and whose opinions we needed to change.”
While taboos around natural female hair persist, Januhairy is responding to a growing number of women who do not feel obligated to conform to such norms. The hair-removal market is in decline, with sales of shaving and hair-removal products down by 3.9% in the last year.
Women are thought to spend £8,500 and eight whole weeks of their lives removing their body hair, so it may not come as a surprise that such an expensive, time consuming and quite often uncomfortable pastime might be fading into obscurity. With this in mind, Jackson hopes many women, emboldened by a growing community, may not instinctively reach for the razor on February 1.
“Maybe one day it’s just not a thing anymore,” Jackson says of the campaign. “I kind of want that to happen where body hair could just be normal and we don’t need a movement like this. Maybe people could just do what they want and we don’t need to talk about it.”
Januhairy aims to empower women to feel comfortable in their own skin – hairy or not. “Of course Januhairy is about dropping the razor, but we don’t shun the shavers. It’s about choice. Choose what you want to do and you should feel accepted and loved for that.”
So whether shaved, hairy, trimmed or primped, Januhairy encourages us to accept ourselves as we choose, and teaches us that body hair needn’t be such a prickly subject.
Donations to Januhairy’s chosen charity Tree Sisters can be made here.
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