In late 2021, Alok Vaid-Menon shared an Instagram series surrounding body-hair acceptance. The poet captioned the inaugral post, "at 8 years old i developed an acute case of trichotillomania: a compulsive urge to pull out my body hair. a few years later i began to use my sister's razors and shave off all of my body hair. a decade later when i started my transition, so many people told me that i would be more 'believable' if i 'just shaved.' i had spent so many years coming into myself and yet here i was, once again, being told that i was the problem."
They continued, "i remembered my sister and mom being told that they were 'mannish' for having arm hair and a slight mustache. i remembered all of the brown women i knew who were made to feel like they were never feminine enough. i resolved then and there not to remove my body hair because i believed in the femininity of my hairy brown foremothers."
Danielle Jackson was a former assistant editor for PS Beauty.
