Step 1
Take a six week yoga course.
This should prepare you for the bending and stretching that is required to be able to reach every spot you wish to shave/epilate/wax. If you have stubborn hair growth, I recommend yin yoga as it will help you attain the muscle definition that allows you to hold impossible positions for a long period of time.
Step 2
Self-assessment (which if all goes according to plan should end in a little self loathing).
After your muscles are ready to assist you, crank up some Garbage, lose the clothing and stand in front of the mirror. At this point you will stop seeing the cute, pretty-in-the-right-light girl you think you are and instead start seeing a wild animal. You may also glance at a comb and wonder if you should just use that for hair maintenance instead of all the razors and wax and powders and creams.
Now you will want to take a short break to google: Is it possible that I am a human-bear hybrid?
It’s not. Just a hairy woman.
Step 3
The Motivational Song.
This may not be an actual song (not that it couldn’t actually be a song. If you’re a person who has an actual song that you sing to yourself, hopefully one you made up yourself, to motivate yourself to shave your legs, you’re awesome and you have won life and can now stop trying).
This is the step where you focus on the big reason.
Why are we doing this? The only way to make yourself start is to focus on this reason. Perhaps you want to wear a very cute tiny skirt? Or you just can’t go running in shorts with hairy legs? Maybe you want to go to the pool? Or it’s a sexual practice? Or you like running your fingers over smooth skin? Or you think body hair on women is offensive because an old lady once told you that at a water park? We’ve all met that same old-lady right?
Whatever your reason.
Step 4
Implementing The Yoga
After you have motivated yourself sufficiently, you may grab the implement of torture you have chosen. I suggest personally that you go for the hardest area first but honestly I imagine everyone has their deeply personal process of hair removal which they are entitled to and on that note you should probably check if the door is locked because you don’t want to have explain why you were in the wild child pose with one hand searching for lost treasure between your butt.
Step 5
Doing the math
At some point when you’ve somewhat settled into your routine and by the I mean made your peace with cutting yourself/burning yourself/pulling at your skin, you’ll start to wonder about how much money you have spent on removing hair from your body over the years. When I started, maybe I was 13, and I was sure, completely sure, that everyone was lying and there was no way I would have to do this for the rest of my life (or until I still cared). I am now jaded and my illusions of body hair just disappearing overnight lay shattered beneath the pile of hair I have been collecting for sixteen years. In those sixteen years I have spent so much money on this. How is this fair? Just how? Razors, creams, powders, epilators, wax, salons, therapy. This is way too much expense. How is this fair? I could have bought a house if I hadn’t spent this much money on hair removal. Oh wait I couldn’t have bought a house because I would have just spent the money on avocado toast.
Although I suppose this is ultimately my own decision and I should have to pay for it…
Step 6
The Awakening of The Feminist
…but is it my own decision really?
And then we’ll wonder.
As we should.
Why do we spend our energies on this? Why does it so often feel like it has to be done. Why don’t I see more women in movies with hairy legs (although, I see a lot of women on YouTube with hairy armpits and it makes me happy. I think we should start a “bare the armpit” movement. If one doesn’t already exist.
Body Hair Removal is so much harder than it should be. I feel like there shouldn’t be so much attached to it. It feels wrong everytime I do remove hair from my body. I have to tell myself, explain, that I only do it to promote self-interest. That I would happily wear a skirt without shaving my legs, because I should be able to do that. It shouldn’t be an agenda. And maybe someday we’ll get there. Maybe someday it won’t matter at all what we waxed and what you didn’t and what we wore and who saw what hair and how inappropriate it seemed and how women should be hairless for some insane reason.
But for now, we must get back to our hair removal process that we (okay, I) have undertaken to please a man.
Step 7
Checking for missed spots
While you’re dealing with all the emotional issues you have due to body hair (rolling my eyes at myself), you’ll fail to notice that you’re finally done. Once you lay yourself down from the shoulder stand, you will need to check whether you missed any spots.
To be honest I have never ever performed this step. You’re on your own on this one.
Step 8
Post Business Shower
After you’ve completing the ordeal you just undertook, you I’ll want to take a shower. Under the warm water you will feel so beautiful in all your glorious hairlessness. Your skin will feel so nice and soft and your heart will be full of warmth and achievement.
But don’t worry.
Your head will interject.
And we will wonder.
Why do we do this?
And what does it mean.
And then, thirteen minutes later when the hair starts to grow back, we’ll wonder and hope, maybe there won’t have to be a next time because something magical will happen?
Maybe?
Or maybe they’ll invent some kind of gadget where I can just push a button and make it all happen in one second? Or better yet a gadget that renders all this grooming unnecessary by changing all social norms associated with women overnight? Is anyone working on this? I know it’s not the NCW.
The Pamphleteer 