«When I began to wonder about what we are taught about body hair and the concepts of masculinity and femininity it was really easy to notice how “femininity” is always linked to a slim, hairless (or almost hairless) woman’s body and “masculinity” to the muscular and full on hair body of a man. So a normal physical characteristic like body hair, present in most human beings, easily becomes another instrument of oppression and another beauty standard to worry about. This way if you’re a woman you have to immediately remove every hair that grows naturally on your body and feel ashamed to the point of denying that you even ever had them. As I told many times, I’ve always had a terrible relationship with my bodyhair. They made me feel trapped, since I always believed that because of how many they were I could have never been considered feminine. And my legs have always been the sore spot. I was just a little kid when I started to analyze other girls and the little blonde invisible hairs on their legs, barely noticeable just in backlight, and I was jealous, I thought they were so impalpable, and attractive. But when I looked at my legs I thought I resembled a beast, an animal, and even when I started to remove those hairs they always left a trace behind, a black dot, a mark that was screaming loud to everyone: “don’t be fooled, this one here is full of hair”. Even now that my deconstruction path about my body continues, I still choose to shave my legs, but my approach has radically changed from the past. My purpose now is to get to know my body again, trying as much as possible to free myself from what I have been told so that I can freely choose what to do. And it’s really hard. To take these pics I had to wait two months. Two months in which I realised it’s such an automatic gesture for me to shave that I haven’t seen the natural hair on my legs for maybe more than 15 years. Those hairs don’t make me any less of a woman or less feminine. Who we are and how we express our identity will never have anything to do with the presence or absence of bodyhair, even if they will always try to tell us otherwise. » @alexasganzerla 💖 #bodyhair #selflove #bodyhairdontcare