"I'm trolled for my 'gross' body hair but love my hairy pits and feel liberated showing them off in a bikini"

Real Fix

Credit: SWNS / Joanna Brown  A woman who "couldn't be bothered" to shave embraced her furry armpits and feels "liberated" showing them off in a bikini - despite being trolled for her "gross" body hair.  Jo Brown, 28, used to shave each time she found her hair growing, before she decided to embrace her natural body hair during the pandemic.  Since ditching the razor, Joanna now hardly removes any of her body hair - instead flaunting her natural dark hair under her armpits, along with her bikini line  and on her legs in skimpy bikinis and is urging others to do the same.  Jo, a nanny, from Colliers Wood, south west London, said: “I got a lot of trolling.  "A lot of very mean comments saying it’s gross.  “I then, as a rebuttal, came back like ‘screw you all’.  “I’m not going to change for them.  "It wasn’t even a conscious decision. It was lockdown. It was summer and I couldn’t be bothered to shave.

Transcript

00:00Oh no, I can't go on a date right now, I haven't shaved.

00:02What a ridiculous thing to say!

00:05I would never say it off, so I actually need to cut my hair off before I go on this date.

00:09It's kind of vulnerable, isn't it?

00:15I know that now it's summer and it's getting kind of hot

00:19and it might be a bummer if you're worried about your bod

00:23so all I want to say is if you're scared to wear a bikini

00:26just wear one anyway because you do not have to be skinny

00:29you got a bikini body.

00:31Hi my name's Jo, also known as Jo Brown or Jo Vlogs on TikTok.

00:35Over lockdown I stopped shaving for various different reasons,

00:39mainly due to laziness.

00:44At the time I was starting up a TikTok channel

00:47which was initially kind of a creative outlet

00:49but also kind of slowly became a body positivity channel

00:53to kind of, you know, encourage and inspire young people to love their bodies

00:57and think a bit more about what they choose to do with their bodies

00:59and not just feel the pressure to conform

01:02and do whatever else is doing on social media.

01:04I appeared in a video with my armpit hair on show

01:08and then got, you know, instantly trolled for it

01:10which I found really funny.

01:12Just your daily reminder that you can be sexy and have roles at the same time.

01:15Oh and body hair.

01:17That's all.

01:18Bye bye now.

01:18As a rebuttal I decided to actively kind of, you know,

01:22stop shaving and started making a few videos about it.

01:27It really shocked me that so many people had something to say about it

01:30and were so disgusted and repulsed by a woman appearing on camera,

01:34you know, in her normal body hair.

01:36I kind of enjoyed it.

01:37I felt like quite liberating and quite empowering

01:40and I kind of saw it as like a new version of beauty, you know.

01:45We're so used to seeing what we see in the media

01:48with hairless women, like perfect tan, slim, skinny bodies,

01:51you know, all these kind of like airbrushing

01:53that we've seen over the last few years.

01:56I know girls who, you know, will wake up, they'll say at a guy's house,

02:00they'll wake up, go and touch up their makeup

02:03and get back into bed with the boys and be like perfectly made up.

02:07I was like, what?

02:09I don't do that.

02:15I wouldn't say I'm against shaving.

02:17You should do what's right for your body at the end of the day.

02:19I think it's a shame that we kind of get brainwashed

02:23into conforming to these social standards

02:25and these social beauty standards at a very young age.

02:27I started shaving when I was 11 because I thought it was the damn thing

02:31and that's what my sisters did and friends were doing.

02:34I've never enjoyed shaving my armpits specifically.

02:37It's just a real, really sad that we live in a society

02:40where it's just the norm because, you know,

02:43once upon a time someone decided that they were going to encourage women to do it.

02:47You know, I think it comes from the 80s porn industry massively.

02:50You know, back in the 1920s, women never shaved.

02:53It's just really in the last 100 years or so.

03:00I've seen firsthand the damaging content there is online.

03:05Even the filters on Instagram and TikTok and women are being told that

03:09if you want to be beautiful, you need to look like this.

03:12That's not true.

03:14We should be encouraging women to learn and study and love themselves

03:19and work on their brains and their bodies, you know,

03:22not work on their beauty.

03:29I share a lot online.

03:31I'm a massive advocate for helping others and trying to inspire other people

03:34and I know there are a lot of women out there who aren't as confident as I am.

03:40My channel is all about self-love and self-acceptance

03:43and encouraging people to not judge everyone and just be themselves

03:47and not feel the need to rip other people apart

03:50and tell them what to do with their bodies.

03:52It's ridiculous that we think we're in an age

03:54where people can just comment on a video

03:56and have such a direct impact on someone's life

03:59and what they choose to do with their body.

04:01It's so bizarre how we have these weird relationships to hair all over your body.

04:07It's just hair.

04:09It's just hair.

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