I find armpit hair incredibly sexy. I have always adored the way it frames and accents the shoulders and arms of someone I’m fucking – the sight of a hot dude lounging topless or naked, arms folded behind his head and armpit hair adding a touch of colour to draw attention to the curve of where his chest meets his shoulders makes me shudder and want to bury my face in him. But armpit hair is sexy on me too, not just for how it looks but how it makes me feel.
At the start of lockdown, I stopped shaving my body hair. For no reason other than that I couldn’t really be bothered. Pre-lockdown I’d occasionally do a big ‘get rid of all body hair’ mission: use Veet for the PCOS places, then run myself a bath, get the razors out, and go to town on the overgrown forest of my legs and armpits. When the bath was done, I’d have to crack out the shower head and battle all the tiny hairs that sat in a ring around the edge, marveling at just how much foliage my mortal body could produce in a mere two weeks.
But at the start of lockdown I stopped shaving altogether. And although I swiftly became annoyed with – and bored by – my legs, for a good long time I loved my hairy armpits. When I stood in front of a mirror topless, with my arms folded neatly behind my head, what I saw in the reflection was the same sexy line from chest to shoulder, accented by a touch of colour. The thing I’d admired in boys I fucked had suddenly become sexy on me.
It was hot. I liked it. I found myself staring into mirrors way more than usual – running a hand through my hair to show off a flash of armpit, or stand with hands-on-hips to let it free.
Armpit hair is sexy and also not painful
It wasn’t just the look that made me happy, though. Unshaved, my armpits did something that felt miraculous to me: they stopped hurting. When you shave your armpits on a regular basis, and wear a bra every day, the stubble sometimes rubs and itches till it drives you halfway up the wall. For some people, this itching will be mild or no big deal – people with softer, blonder hair maybe, or just magic skin that’s resilient to this sort of discomfort. For me, though? My coarse hairs itch like fuck, and they sometimes turn to ingrown ones, which leave painful lumps just where the edges of my bra dig into the skin.
Ouch.
If you don’t shave your armpits and you need an example for comparison, my best mate gave me a fabulous one: he’s recently started wearing a cycle helmet (for which, incidentally, I give him kudos every time I see it – he is precious and I have extracted firm promises that he will do his best to never die) and the strap sits on his chin, just where his freshest stubble is. He immediately understood the ‘armpit/bra’ thing and showed me where the chin strap rubs his face.
“Fair play, mate,” he told me, rubbing his chin. “It is the itchiest thing in the world.”
So I stopped shaving my armpits. And as well as discovering that armpit hair is sexy on me, I also realised that I’d wandered through the world for most of my adult life with a baseline level of pain and discomfort zinging regularly from my pits to the center of my brain. Distracting me. Annoying me. Making me feel grumpy and unsexy and uncomfortable. Then one day I understood I could simply stop: that this boring, painful battle wasn’t one I needed to fight.
Life is better without pain
There are some battles you really don’t need to fight, you know. A couple of years prior to this armpit revelation, I realised I’d spent nearly 15 years unable to sleep on my right-hand side. I had a cartilage piercing in my right ear which gave me hassle if I put pressure on it. I loved that piercing when I was young – combined with my others it made me feel kickass and punk. My Mum disapproved of it (win!), it flashed delightfully when I tucked my hair behind my ear (double-win!) and a few times I’d had hot boys tell me it was sexy (the literal dream!). But it hurt me and it made it hard to sleep in a way that was comfortable. For almost fifteen years. One day, at my partner’s prompting (for which I remain incredibly grateful), I resigned myself to simply taking it out.
Voila! No pain.
There are some things in life that we accept because we’re so used to them we don’t realise we’re allowed to simply stop. Certain pains that become so entwined in our lives that they feel like they’re now a part of us. Physical pains like ingrown hairs or emotional pains like a fear of someone’s disapproval or the weight of responsibility to make someone else happy. We get so used to living with these pains that they become a part of our lives – so wrapped up in who we are that we forget we have the option to simply stop.
But there’s power in realising you don’t have to live with certain pain. There’s a joy – and relief – in recognising which problems in life are ones you must tackle, and which you can leave by the wayside. Life is hard, and it comes with a great deal of pain. But not all pain is necessary, and it’s not always your job to grin and bear it.
8 Comments
Yes to all this! I’ve not shave my armpits in years now and I don’t miss shaved pits at all. I’ve not shaved my legs for like 18 months or so and I’m thinking about that because I miss the silky smooth feel but I haven’t got round to actually shaving to achieve that yet. *LOL* But also carrying the pain without realising you can just say ‘No.’ that resounds. It’s something I struggle with. And it’s amazing how freeing it is to know you can just stop something that causes you pain!
Yes! I adore armpit hair! It looks lovely, feels lovely and gathers all those delicious pheromones – unnnnf! And there’s nothing sexier to me that a a flash of it on someone I fancy :D
Glad you love it on you x x
Yes, but….
I haven’t shaved or waxed anywhere in over 3 years and have recently started toying with the idea of starting again. I haven’t adjusted what I wear – still strappy tops, mini skirts, bikini. There’s the pain of shaving but then there’s also the pain of having people, men and women, stare at you, feeling like you have to constantly explain yourself and, ultimately knowing that I’m probably paying the price for not choosing the path of least resistance. Maybe this comes from the little girl in me who had to grow up with a tache and felt unwanted throughout my teens, twenties, even now, but I know and speak from experience when I say that a lot of extremely lovely, kind, woke people are still subconsciously repulsed by this. And I’m tired of having to fight it.
Yeah, you’re right. It’s a fucker. I don’t want to just go ‘ah nah fuck it those people are twats’ because you’re right – this stuff wears you the fuck down no matter how much you try to remind/tell yourself that the people who care/judge are wrong and arseholes. I don’t know how to deal with it to be honest, and I wish I had an answer that didn’t change year on year. I have had long periods in the past of general body horror, and feeling like while I’d accept *other people’s* bodies as beautiful and cool no matter what, *my own* was always a source of shame and frustration and it needed to be changed. So yeah, I’m just going to acknowledge that you’re right, and while my current attitude is going to be ‘fuck off if you want to sleep with me but can’t accept my armpit hair’, I fully understand why you’re tired of having to fight it. Sending love.
Hell of a metaphor, there. <3
I like to see a bit of wispy armpit hair. Every girl I was with was clean shaven, so I had no opinion until the first girl I lived with came along. She had very long hair in a braid that almost reached her belt and she didn’t shave anywhere (if she did she didn’t tell me). I came to really like the wisp of black hair under her arms, but this love did not extend to her legs. Being polite, I never made comment as she was a girl who knew what she wanted and what she didn’t want to hear. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t do a little touch up as she knew I liked to watch. I sure did! She was a one of a kind person and still is. We talk. She lives far away. We are good friends. It wouldn’t surprise me that your recently departed friend and you are still talking and going out for breakfast (and maybe more) thirty or more years from now. Now that I have entered into memory lane a wank might well be in order!
I love this post. We are brought up with the idea that something that is inherently a part of us is innately disgusting and it’s a hard mindset to shift. Armpits and legs I’m not too bothered about. I can shave or not shave and it doesn’t seem to cause much discomfort when I do.
But I do have an ongoing internal battle about what to do about all the hair around my vulva. It’s not a tidy little tuft but covers the top of my thighs and goes right up into my arsecrack. The arse hair I’m most self-conscious about, there’s this idea in mind that when I’m bent over for a spanking, it totally ruins the aesthetic. I have endless conversations with my boyfriend about how I don’t to put sharp objects or harsh chemicals on the most sensitive part of my body (and he doesn’t care either way so I don’t know why I involve him really.)
And every time I do try and do something about it, it causes problems. Stupidly, this always coincides with some big sexy time event so it’s the worst time to fuck up my nether regions. I used woo-woo cream to try and remove my hair justbefore bf and I were due to see each other for the first time after 4 month lockdown break. Within seconds of applying it, it hurt like fuck so I removed it. So I still had all the hair PLUS a painful vulva. Lose lose.
I had my ‘bikini line’ waxed by a beautician one time. Not doing that again. Not because of the expense, embarrassment or pain – I was prepared for all of that. It was the fact that after I had it done, I had no feeling down there at all. My vulva was completely numb for about three days. Given that I did it just before a week long holiday with bf, it was somewhat annoying to say the least. I had lots of plans for that bit of me!
I love that the girls in the picture have chin and neck hair. That’s the hair I find it hardest to accept. I think that left to its own devices, my face would sport a full Brian Blessed beard. But I don’t leave it to its own devices of course, I spend hours each week, tweezering out the hair. I wish I could just accept it but I’m really not ready for that.
So thanks for a great article. It really is something women should talk more about. We should treat it like its normal. Because it is!
I’m a man who worships my wife and her body! She does shave her armpits, but she knows that I like them to have some hair, so often she will let it grow some for me. I love her armpit and I love to put my face in it, especially when making sweet love!. I find her smell intoxicating, especially when it’s a bit muskier because there is some hair.