I picked up a story this week from various UK news outlets, regarding women binning the razor and going ‘au naturel’.

It’s slightly depressing to read the line that ‘New trend for celebrities to bare their own body hair has emboldened women’. Why do you need a ‘celebrity’ lead on this issue? Why not embolden yourself by making your own lifestyle choices, regardless of what any shallow ‘celebrity’ is doing?

Other than that, I welcome news that women may not be slavishly following what any fashion industry is telling them how to dress, do their hair, apply make-up or anything else.

Julia Roberts possibly led the recent upsurge in celebrities not shaving their underarm hair

Julia Roberts was famously photographed with underarm hair, almost twenty years ago, and since then it has become a much more visible thing, both on red carpets and the High Street, at least in the UK.

While I’ve long been an advocate of not shaving ‘down there’, and have periods when I don’t shave my armpits either (and reflect this in SL), I do like to shave my legs. Kudos, then, to model Willow, who agreed to sport an essentially full set of body hair for us, utilising some of the same body hair I would – notably the Nearly Tactile pubic hair and Route 666 underarm hair. (price L$59 on the Marketplace) I don’t think I would step out in SL (or RL) with leg hair

What she’s added, though, is leg hair from Jaryth’s Barber shop (price L$250). It’s quite a ‘whoa!!!!!’ sort of look, it’s going to turn heads, big time. It’s very striking.

I wondered if the initially radical look of a hairy-legged nude would be softened by the addition of clothes, so I also got Willow to pose while clothed (now there’s a first for SLN!).

And yes! The look is somewhat softened by the addition of clothing.

Willow is an avatar who likes a bohemian, hippy look, and she has been sporting both pubic and underarm hair previously ‘as a reflection of real life’, so I asked her what she thought of the addition of leg hair.

‘I don’t shave my legs in real life either, but they don’t seem quite as radically dark and hairy as they do on my avatar. My initial reaction was ‘yuk!’, but having lived with avatar leg hair for a couple of days I’ve grown to like the look. There have been negative comments, yes. There’s sometimes negative comments about wearing pubic and underarm hair, never mind leg hair, but negative comments about either leave me dismissing the commenter as shallow and unworthy of wasting any more of my time, and I think I’m rather going to stick with the leg hair too, as you can either accept me for how I represent myself in Second Life, my Second Life, or you move on, muted. I’m not prepared to live my Second Life in accordance with what you think is a female ideal. I don’t play for you. I play for me.’

I’m not convinced that we’re about to see hairy legged women become a trend, but evidence grows that women are letting their armpits and pubic area become a little more hirsute. The trend in SL has been for more women to sport more pubic hair, so it will be interesting to see if this continues, either under arm or underneath. After all, we seem to inhabit a society in which what grows naturally, hair, is often described as a ‘fetish’ as opposed to ‘natural’.

Ella