Shaving: A rite of passage for women too?

Thanks to a thoughtful post over at Vagenda Mag, I recently started thinking about how hair (or the lack thereof) has played a big role in my gender identity.

When I was a little girl, I never really thought about gender very much. I liked to wear dresses and play with stuffed animals, sure, but I also played with Legos and Omagles. I really liked swimming. I remember how excited I was when my parents got me a baseball bat and glove. I also remember how incredibly satisfying it was to be able to kick a soccer ball as far as the boys in the older grades could. I remained blissfully unaware of gender until the 3rd grade, when my secondary sex characteristics started developing. Or, to put it simply, I got boobs and started growing armpit hair. My mom would no longer let me run around outside shirtless like I did when I was younger, and my school principal made me start wearing a bra. But even so, I still didn't really think about gender much. All I knew was that my body had a certain shape, and it meant something, but I couldn't really be bothered to care what it meant. Just that my body was different from my peers.

Over time I came to realize that my body wasn't just different; its difference was important. The school principal wouldn't let me help with the heavy lifting. The boys started paying attention to and making fun of my boobs. When I got my period, I had to become more private; letting people know that I was menstruating was shameful. I wore sports bras to try and press my boobs flat so they wouldn't garner people's attention, and I stored bags of feminine hygiene products in my teacher's desk. I felt enormous amounts of pressure about how I had to act as a female. I had to start sitting a certain way, start dressing a certain way, start talking a certain way. I became aware of how people looked at and talked about my body, and learned how to keep others from feeling uncomfortable about me.

As my body changed and grew and developed, my mother helped me adjust as best she could, but I was never allowed to shave. I wore short shorts and short skirts to show off my well-toned dancer's legs, and I soon gained the affectionate nickname "Gorilla Legs." The hairs in my armpits would collect lint and become inky pits of despair. And perhaps the worst of all were the stray hairs that would escape from my bikini and mar my inner thighs. My mom took pity, and let me start shaving my armpits, and eventually my upper thighs as well, but it took years of trying to convince her that I should be allowed to shave my legs. I finally convinced her near the end of 8th grade. The next day in school I proudly showed off my new legs to anyone whose attention I could catch. And my nickname became "No-Longer-Gorilla Legs."

When I think back over the way I came to understand my gender and its role in my life, I consider the moment I convinced my mother to let me shave my legs as one of the first moments when I really thought to myself, "Hey, I'm a girl." Up until that point, the way I experienced my gender was as a hindrance; I was forced to be and act a certain way because of how I was born. I had to wear an itchy, uncomfortable bra, I was expected to wear dresses, and I was understood as too weak to help with lifting heavy things. Even getting my period was an annoyance because it arrived when I really wanted to go swimming. But shaving my legs was different. I was claiming something about myself. Learning to shave became an empowering act, not something that I was forced to do because of my gender, but something I wanted to do.

Even now, after a decade or more of shaving, I still get a small amount of glee when the razor blades run across my skin.