When I was in middle school, one of my best friends started shaving her arms because she had really dark hair and was self-conscious of it. She was just 12 years old, but even at that young age, the pressure to look a certain way had already set in. But why has body hair (or the lack thereof) always been such an issue for women in the United States? It’s unfortunate that our society’s beauty ideals have led us to this point, and as Yahoo Beauty reports, one woman is now being shamed for it on social media. And the really sad part is, there are probably many more.
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It all started when Instagram personality and musician Tayset Kenton posted two pictures of herself on Twitter that were taken during a photo shoot. In one of them, her dark arm hair is exposed, something that Kenton says she has been bullied for since she was young. But instead of waiting for the Internet trolls to pick her apart, she decided to call attention to it herself.
“I’m gonna get so much s*** for my arm in the first pic lol. It’s 2017 & ya mcm doesn’t know girls are born w/ hair on their bodies. He’s 27,” Kenton wrote in her post below.
I’m gonna get so much shit for my arm in the first pic lol. It’s 2017 & ya mcm doesn’t know girls are born w/ hair on their bodies. He’s 27. pic.twitter.com/zhkVJcqQWJ
— Tayset (@NASTYG4L) August 27, 2017
She continued her thoughts in a consecutive post, sharing these comments: “It’s either people telling me to shave or ppl telling me they didn’t even notice the hair & i’m just attention seeking lmao. can’t win.”
— Tayset (@NASTYG4L) August 27, 2017
When asked about the Twitter reaction (her post now has more than 8,000 likes and tons of supportive comments), Kenton told Yahoo Beauty: “I knew that if I posted that picture with no caption, someone would say something about my arm, so I decided to point it out myself instead. I love my hair and I find it ridiculous that people think it’s something that I should get removed.”
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Her body hair philosophy? “Just to Get. Over. It. Hair is something we all have. It’s something to be embraced, not looked down on,” she says.
We couldn’t agree more.
