Maya is "always quite surprised by the look on people's faces" when she lifts her arms while wearing a tank top. Four years ago, the 24-year-old international relations student stopped waxing her armpits, then her legs, then her lower abdomen. Initially guided by economic reasons, her choice quickly took on a militant, feminist character. "I've deconstructed the idea of hair instilled in me by my mother, who unjustifiably thinks that it's dirty and ugly," she said. Men are not subject to the same injunctions as women regarding hair removal and the student wants to normalize women's body hair.
Women under 25 – who are the most subject to today's beauty decrees – are the ones who depilate the most – and they're getting increasingly younger. But carried along by the emergence of the fourth feminist wave in the 2010s, and the online Body Positivity movement, which advocates the appreciation of all body types, some of the new generation are questioning the diktat of hair removal, and are epilating much less frequently. According to a survey from the Institut français d'opinion publique (IFOP) published in 2021, 34% of 18-24 year-olds say they depilated less after the first lockdown, compared with 18% of women of all ages.
Maya's approach is in line with a trend increasingly in favor of allowing body hair to grow freely. "I wouldn't have stopped waxing if I hadn't seen on social media that more and more women were stopping too," she said. The student was one of the first among her group of friends to keep her body hair, but she now sees that many of them have "cut down on waxing." "When I'm out and about, I'm proud" and also "admirative" when encountering women who do not remove their body hair.
"To inspire change, people need to see women taking responsibility for themselves," said 27-year-old Esther Calixte-Béa, known on social media as Queen Esie. The visual artist and influencer from Quebec, who defines herself as a body-hair activist, "has battled with her hairiness for nearly five years. "I've always been very hairy, and waxing hurts so much," she said. But in 2019, the young designer who had "tried everything" to get rid of her hair and who hated her body, decided, after "trying everything" to better assume it, she would create a dress that would show off her chest hair. "I got so many messages from women who thought they were the only ones who were hairy," she said. "That's when I realized how important it was to have these discussions about female body hair and hair removal."
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