The Bush Factor
If you thought this post would be political, please know—It’s not. It’s also not about writing, but a personal rant regarding an article and TikTok video about the female body. If this doesn’t interest you, please skip on by till my next post!
I read this article from Glamour magazine this morning and couldn’t stop thinking about it:
‘Full Bush in a Bikini,’ Explained | Glamour
I know this isn’t the typical place I’d normally post my thoughts on this subject, but since it’s my platform to explore all writing and perspectives that call to me, I decided to go for it.
First up, I’m Italian. With my heritage, unfortunately or fortunately, I was born with more body hair than others. When I was young, most of my awful fears and doubts came from my body. Not a shocker since the majority of females struggle with body issues. Besides acne, body hair tortured me. I took care of the problem in the only ways imaginable back then: by using every painful method I could find.
I shaved. I bleached. I waxed. I plucked. I lasered. There was even this new tool that ripped the hair right from the root I heard great things about, and I ended up raw and bleeding. I dealt with burns, ingrown hairs, lumps, itchiness, and general misery. I spent hours in my bathroom berating myself for my ugliness and craving to be blonde and light skinned, where I’d be beautifully bare in all ways.
Looking back, I’m most sad about all the time I wasted hating my poor body, which was healthy, fit, and abled.
Summer months were the worst because I had to don skimpy bathing suits. I couldn’t just show up “beach ready” like all my friends. No, I’d need to prep for endless hours making sure none of those dark, wiry hairs showed and humiliated me. I thought it was why I didn’t have a boyfriend. I thought if I could just get rid of it all, my life would be so much better and easier.
I came from archaic times in the beauty world, though. Today, there are much more sophisticated ways to deal with the problem. Dermatologists now can permanently laser away excess hair anywhere on the body. There are multiple tools reasonably priced to keep hair tame. The razors and opportunities to morph into a hairless beauty is now available to the masses.
When I finished reading the article about females showing up unshaved and free on the beaches, I trembled with joy and hope. Hope that other women won’t spend wasted time trying to be beat their bodies into submission to achieve some ideal perfection we’ll never, ever get to.
Women always dream of having a body that’s not theirs. We have learned to use the tools available to change them into our vision of beauty. But the joke is always on us.
Because we never truly get there. Once we get to the weight goal, we want Botox. Or if we’re thin, we want more defined muscles, or a flatter stomach. We fight skin blemishes, scars, saggy lines, hair, veins, or anything perceived ugly.
The real revolution for women would be the capability to make peace with our body and unveil it to the world without apology.
To reclaim our bodies on our terms.
That, to me, is true freedom.
This article wasn’t about a rally to get all women to storm the beaches with a full bush. It wasn’t an article trying to sway women to shave.
It is about the power to disrobe and show all the stuff we secretly hate, and be okay with it. I want to weep at the wasted time I spent on something that really made no difference except to me. Or maybe a few who never even mattered.
But youth is wasted on the young because it seems only with age are we able to come to this type of wisdom.
This year, I made a bargain to honor my body in all its messy forms. I will never look like the woman in my dreams when I look in the mirror. That woman isn’t even real. It’s an idea transformed into some image in my head conjured to torture me on all the things I am NOT.
But if that perspective is available to us, so is the other one.
Grace. Gratitude. Power. Strength. Beauty. In all forms.
I’ve birthed two beautiful children. I can walk and dance and move. For now, at this moment, I think I’m healthy. My body is a roadmap of some awesome memories, including fabulous food, wine, and definitely too much partying. If I could go back and trade all of those experiences for a hairless, unmarked, perfect body?
I’d say HELL no.
Maybe I’ll venture to the beaches this summer all natural—with no razor burn or apologies.
Maybe the videos are going viral on TikTok because women are getting so damn tired of twisting ourselves inside out to be what everyone else wants us to be.
Maybe it’s a rallying cry to claim who we are, whatever that looks like.
Maybe it’s time to free the bra. Free the bush.
And free ourselves.
Any way we want.