Tara Moshizi: How can the war against body hair still feel lonely?

The battle against body hair still feels isolating, writes Tara Moshizi in this commentary for Dagens Nyheter. She recounts a painful past experience where she nearly burned her legs and another where she spent an entire vacation in long pants. The arrival of summer, for Moshizi, signals the commencement of the "war against body hair," yet she questions why this struggle feels so solitary when so many are affected. She describes trying various methods over the years, from shaving and waxing to more unconventional approaches. In her teens, she read that burning hair off with a candle could work, but this resulted in painful blisters on her skin. Another time, expensive salon waxing left her skin raw and damaged, forcing her to wear long pants for the remainder of that summer.

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Doesn't it hurt? the beautician says as she methodically strokes the laser over my shins.

This "fight against hair" has come to define her summers since early adolescence. As soon as temperatures rise and tights are shed, the planning around hair removal begins. A spontaneous beach trip requires an early alarm to shave her legs first. A date night means attending to her razor before anything else. Moshizi notes that having dark, Middle Eastern body hair in a country where many have lighter, sparser hair adds to a feeling of being an "UFO." She estimates she has spent approximately 800 hours of her 42 years removing hair from her legs and armpits – roughly the time it takes to become proficient at a musical instrument.

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Brilliant, right! And of course, they burned – but unfortunately, also the skin, which then ached with large, ugly blisters.

At times, she has felt tempted to simply stop, to let her hair grow and embrace it, to demonstrate strength against patriarchal norms. However, she admits that vanity still holds sway, and she cannot bear the thought of looking like a "cactus in a miniskirt." The knowledge that millions of women share this frustration should perhaps offer some comfort, yet the war against body hair still feels profoundly lonely. While other beauty phenomena like makeup, skincare, and hairstyles are well-documented in literature, Moshizi has never encountered a literary description of a woman struggling with her body hair. It seems to be a collective agreement to keep this aspect of female experience a secret.

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It hurt so much that tears streamed down my face, and when I got home, I realized that it wasn't just unsightly hair that had been ripped away – but also parts of the skin.