Unpopular Opinion: Women Shouldn’t Shave
5 Unexpected Mental Shifts I Experienced When I Gave Up Shaving
I haven’t shaved at all this year.
It wasn’t a New Year’s resolution or a social experiment. It wasn’t even really my choice so much as a consequence of an injury that affected my mobility so deeply that just keeping my body clean became an epic chore that required logistic planning. When you don’t know whether you’ll have the physical capacity to wash your hair, shaving falls by the wayside pretty quickly.
I assumed that when I was well enough I would return to it. I haven’t shaved for ten months (and counting!) but I am now physically able to do it. It wouldn’t be as easy as it once was, but I could get it done if I was motivated to.
The thing is, I’m just…not.
This involuntary hiatus of mine turned out to be quite educational. When it started, I had the same thoughts I’d been having for most of my life.
I saw my growing hair as disgusting or gross and longed to be able to remove it. I felt I was now repulsive. I consoled myself with a reminder that I wasn’t looking for anyone, nor did I have a romantic or sexual partner to be disgusted by the forest of hair I was sprouting. I thought these perceptions were “natural”.
A couple of months in, I noticed a shift in my thinking. I started to question that voice and the messages themselves. I spent more time interrogating the ideas. I would stand in front of a mirror, focus on the hairy parts, and ask myself what I really thought.
Now, my mind didn’t change overnight. The ‘eww gross’ thought definitely continued to make an appearance but it was no longer center stage. That space was unoccupied — waiting now, for me to decide what would become the prevalent thought.
I was learning from this injury and all the changes to my daily routines that it was forcing. I decided to lean into that process and got curious about this belief system I’d been carrying my whole life without ever acknowledging the weight of it.
Without further ado, a list of mental shifts that occur when a woman stops shaving for a prolonged period:
- Taking note of the mental toll
Not having to shave or even having the expectation, mentally, that I would shave at some point was incredibly freeing. I had no idea how much energy women spend on managing our body hair until it was completely removed from my mental workbench. Then I marveled at all the free space — the mental energy I could now spend on things that actually mattered to me.
When I was a woman who shaved, I had to think, in advance (usually the day before), about what my plans were and whether that meant I needed to shower and shave. Planning what you’re going to wear to that dinner you were invited to so you know whether you can get away with just shaving your pits or that, plus your legs up to the knee or if you’re going to need the full body treatment.
I never really acknowledged that this takes energy and focus. I never questioned the need to plan like this so I could “look nice”. But once it was gone, I felt the weightlessness of its absence as pure, unadulterated relief. I’d been carrying an invisible burden for decades and I’d finally put it down.
2. I’m done wasting my time
Along with noticing the mental yoke being removed, I became aware of the time I was getting back. Not at first. My injury made everything take longer and seem impossible then. But as I became able to do more and the question of whether I could (physically speaking) shave again arose, I began to take note of what that would mean. If I added shaving back into my routine, I would have to think about it again and put that yoke back on. I would also have to reserve time to do the actual shaving. Time that I had begun using for things I love like reading poetry or doing yoga.
Being so severely injured gave me a greater appreciation of how I spend my time and attention. Like most Americans, I didn’t really note what I was spending my time on or where the majority of my attention was going. Women, it turns out, spend 72 days of our lives shaving off our unwanted hair. Over 1,700 hours wasted on battling physically with the way our bodies are naturally designed to look and feel.
This calculation only includes the time spent physically shaving. It doesn’t include the mental time spent logistically coordinating time to shave, or shopping for shaving supplies. Who knows what it comes to once you add that in?
I could start shaving again. Or I could take the hours of my life that would be uselessly siphoned by such an endeavor and reread Whitman’s Leaves of Grass again. And that’s with just this year’s savings.
3. I don’t care if you stare
When all this started, it was very cold outside (as cold as it gets in Southern Arizona anyway) so there was no one but me to notice. As it warmed up here, I found myself battling the subconscious beliefs I’d been hoarding around how women are allowed to look in public.
Women in public are subject to policing of our appearance from anyone and everyone. There’s a reason the “you should smile more” phrase is so cliché — because every woman has heard it. Just as every woman is aware that her appearance is being constantly judged by those around her.
I had to wrestle with this on a mental and emotional level and resolve those hang-ups in a way I had never envisioned in order to go out in public in my favorite tank or shorts. It was harder than I imagined. It also took longer than I thought it should for me to actually be comfortable. Even after I thought I had made peace with it, I would catch someone staring and the insecurities would swell up, societal script of shame would start playing in my mind and I would have to expend more mental energy combatting those.
Like any muscle, exercising this mental discipline on a regular basis made it easier over time. I started to have occurrences where someone would stare and instead of shame a new voice inside me would say “Yeah, I have hair, same as you. What of it?”
One day I caught myself doing this and realized I didn’t care what people thought of my appearance anymore. You like it? Great. You don’t? Eh. Whatever. You do you.
Just like with the mental yoke, I had never brought to my conscious awareness the gravity of the expectations around occupying a public space as a female that I had been holding onto and imposing upon myself. Letting that go was another incomprehensible relief.
4. Where did all that come from?
By this point, even an idiot would notice the pattern of unconsciously held beliefs underpinning this whole thing. The difficulty lies in defying the programming and actively and intelligently questioning our collective beliefs around the feminine. Most importantly, the prescriptive behaviors, especially those that we’re told are non-optional. Something not done to our male counterparts in the same way. For example, beards on men are acceptable — even preferred by some.
If you stared at a man and declared him “disgusting” because he didn’t shave his face, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who agreed. Some might feel it’s not for them, but “disgusting”…that’s a little extreme, don’t you think?
Women are not free to make these choices (according to our society) in the way that men are. We can’t be trusted to make decisions about our own appearance. And at its heart, this comes down to the belief that women exist for male pleasure.
It’s the reason we’re universally expected to wear high heels (despite the fact that they are horrifically destructive to our bodies), and makeup (which is bad for the skin and, depending on what it’s made of, possibly poisonous), as well as carry purses (where are our functional pockets?!), and an epically long list of other burdens of being a woman.
All of the mental and emotional work that goes into identifying and freeing oneself from this toxic regulation serves to illustrate other unconscious beliefs that are rooted similarly in gender and are equally constraining our natural freedom.
One cannot free oneself from a binding one cannot perceive. Awareness is the first step toward liberation.
5. Giving up shaving so I can afford to bring back my coffee habit…
When investigating how much time women spend shaving I happened upon how much we spend on our shaving supplies. On average, $10,000 in your lifetime (and I imagine when they made that figure, they probably didn’t factor in pandemic inflation).
I decided I would take the money I was saving and start going to my favorite local coffee spot again.
No regrets.
Unexpected bonus: it’s better for the environment! For years I’ve been implementing little changes in my life to be more eco-conscious or sustainable. Using reusable bags, composting, repurposing waste stream items, and so on… and now I can add cutting out waste from shaving. I get to save money, time, my own sanity, and now, also the planet!
So why would I ever go back?
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