Everything Shower

Artwork by Rachel Genito

I stole my mother’s razor the first time I shaved and prayed she wouldn’t notice. It was fourth grade. I had nothing but Youtube and a dream and inexplicable shame about my sudden desire to change. Is this what it means to be a woman? I wondered, as little dots of blood emerged from my thighs. Will I be a woman when I look new?

I know how to shave, now. Most of the time, there isn’t any blood. Tonight, I prepare myself for an Everything Shower, my biblical rebirth. An Everything Shower means: Shampoo, Conditioner, Body Wash (all three of which smell like cake), face wash (unscented), toothpaste (spearmint), and, most importantly, making myself hairless in all the necessary places. I haven’t shaved for a week. I start off well. But half way through, I’m dizzy. The steam is thick, like syrup, my skin is red and raw, one leg is bare, the other is not, and I resent the pink razor that lives in my right hand. Like most rebirths, it is not a pretty process. It fumes from those shaving cream chemicals. But it is worth it. By the end, I will feel like a woman. 

Adults grow pubic hair. In general, it occurs around the ages of 8 to 13 for most girls. And yet, I have never seen a swimsuit model with the slightest hint of stubble. A bikini wax in Brooklyn goes for up to $80. I got my first Brazilian this summer, before I went to Europe, in hopes of looking clean. Untouched. Untarnished. The only thing that separated my naked body from the waxer was a thin sheet of parchment paper draped over my hips. She told me to spread my knees apart, wide, and removed it. She stared at my vagina while I stared at the ceiling. Despite my friends’ grave warnings, I wasn’t prepared for just how hot the wax would feel on my skin. It burned so bad that I bit through the inside of my cheek to hide my reaction. As a humorless joke to myself, I silently chanted the phrase, “beauty is pain,” and clenched my teeth like a warrior defending some noble cause.

Eurocentric beauty standards have always defined white women as the pinnacle of fragility. And what is being fragile, if not being new? Still packaged in plastic, still easily returned, still readily refundable. The perfect, sexy woman has milk smooth skin. Her eyes are pale, but even when they’re not, they’re wide like a child’s – pitiful and pleading. It is especially vital that even when she does not shave, you can only see her leg hair from a few inches away. The blonde blends with ease. But logically, the “good genes” of Sydney Sweeney cannot exist unless somewhere out there lurks equally “bad” ones. Eurocentric beauty standards have always defined the features of Black and brown women as problems to be solved. For decades, Darwinian logic explained the presence of body hair on women of color — dark, thick, curled — as an example of unevolved, primitive genes. Noticeably more visible arm, back, upper lip, under arm, leg, pubic, navel, and even eyebrow hair became a weapon to aesthetically separate the pure from the deviant. Profiling women of color as less-than-women has led to devastating violence, no matter how removed it may seem from the beauty aisle. In the United States, the maternal mortality rate for Black women is three times higher than their white counterparts. Systemic dehumanization results in medical neglect. Since they are seen as less feminine, and therefore less vulnerable, their reports of pain are treated with disregard. Scientific racism taught my Puerto Rican ancestors that they were genetically inferior. Now I buy Fairy Dust Hair Removal Cream from Target and write essays about it. 

It was fourth grade. I wore pink denim shorts with a gingham pattern. I sat at a cluster of desks, chatting with classmates. Suddenly, a blonde, blue-eyed boy dove under the desks and emerged shouting, “Elisa has more hair on her legs than any of the boys.” The others each peered under their desks, one by one, to see. They started laughing, comparing everyone’s legs to discover that the boy had been correct. I laughed along. “You kind of look like a monkey,” he said, grinning. I cried in a bathroom stall that day and experienced an unfamiliar and entirely consuming repulsion with myself. I stole my mother’s razor the first time. I shaved and prayed she wouldn’t notice.

The idea that a woman should look pre-pubescent to be sexy is born from the same idea that to be sexy is to be new. Sexy is young. Young is sexy. At some point along the way from cave men to lingerie, unshaved underarms became a radical declaration—an unattractive, unhygienic rejection of femininity. If a high fashion photo shoot features a woman with visible body hair, it instantly falls into a certain category. A politicized agenda. A feminist rebellion. 

But when I forgot to buy razors last week and let my hair grow, I did not have any mission in mind. 

As the week went on, I began to avoid the tank tops and shorts in my wardrobe. I knew I had no one to impress. But even still, the thought of a flicker of disgust from a stranger on the street persuaded me to hide. It’s engrained; the fact that my body is disgusting in its natural condition has been burned into my brain. 

I will be acceptable when altered. I will be sliced to civility.

Elisa Edgar