Something I have zero hesitation admitting to the whole Internet: I'm not a fan of shaving. It's not just that I'm lazy (which, to be fair, I also am). I just don't see any reason why I should have to do it at all. Even as a teenager, when this dreaded task first came into my life, I resented the idea of it, and in my adulthood, I have spared shaving only for times when I have had very practical reasons to do it.
I think people are a little surprised when I either tell them (or they figure out very quickly when they accidentally brush part of my body) I don't shave. Even though I grew up constantly worrying about my appearance, I never really gave a crap about what people thought about the small forest on my legs and wherever else I happened not to shave recently. To date, I've never even shaved the part of my leg above the thigh, and before someone inevitably gets on here and says, "No fair, you're blonde, nobody can see it," let me assure you that although my the hair on my head is light, the hair everywhere else is ANYTHING but (you're welcome for that mental picture).
I'm not trying to pull a holier-than-thou for women who do shave, because there are plenty of legitimate reasons to do it. Hopefully, unless you're a swimmer or something, you mostly just do it because you just like the way it feels or looks for yourself, and that's fine. It's when you feel pressure to shave for someone else's sake that I feel like the practice becomes problematic; Clearly, you should be able to embrace yourself the way you are and surround yourself with people who do, too. And if that's not enough, here are some more totally legit reasons to never shave ever again:
It takes for-freaking-ever
72 days. That's how long the average woman spends shaving in her lifetime. You could have learned to play an instrument! Speak another language! WATCHED THE ENTIRE DURATION OF FRIENDS MULTIPLE TIMES. That is a scary amount of time and you will never get it back.
And it's literally the most boring task on the planet
You obviously can't do anything productive during those 10-20 minutes since both hands are occupied and there's water everywhere, but add a bunch of aggressively sharp razor blades and you can't even daydream while you're doing it, which was the reason warm showers were invented in the first place.
It's just going to grow back
You know the story of Sisyphus? As punishment for whatever the hell he did to piss off Zeus, he was sentenced to an eternity of pushing a massive boulder up a hill, only to watch it fall right back down so that he'd have to do it all over again until the end of time. That is what shaving is except, last I checked, we didn't do anything to piss off Zeus. So what is our deal even?
Your hair is actually there for a reason
It's not like your body was all, "HAHA, wouldn't it be hilarious if I just sprouted hair in someone's nether regions for no evolutionary purpose? I just want to watch women in bikinis squirm and also for a lot of men to make terrible jokes about bushes." The hair on your vag actually protects it from bacteria, like a little furry superhero.
And removing your hair is actually kinda bad for your bajingo
No matter what method you use to remove it, you're going to leave micro-tears in your skin that make you more susceptible to infections like streptococcus, staphylococcus aureus, and methicillin resistant staph aureus. And I've found as a rule of thumb that the harder it is to pronounce the name of an infection, the gnarlier it gets.
It will keep you warm in the winter
Elsa's on a rampage. A girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to survive.
Razors are actually really expensive
Made only worse by the fact that women's shaving products are more expensive than men's, even though there is virtually no difference between the products. Go spend that money on something important like pizza.
You won't have to poke your prickly self
The day after you shave your leg hairs are like an army of tiny knives. It is the most unpleasant sensation in the world. But when your hair gets long enough, it gets all soft and flowy, like how I imagine Chris Hemsworth's hair would blow back in a low budget romance movie, and it's genuinely more fun to stroke.
Nobody who actually matters will care
People (*cough* the patriarchy) who would "prefer" for you to not have hair are immature whiny little asshats who ultimately are just looking to infantilize women. Militantly wanting "their women" to be shaved is seriously one of the least evolved things I've ever heard come out of a person's mouth, and it's better to know that right off the bat about someone than to find out that they are all about perpetuating unfair gender standards when you are already partially invested in them. Basically, I'm using my weeds to weed out losers. GO TEAM HAIR.
Images: Fotolia; Giphy (5)
