Body hair activist, Esther Calixte-Bea who encourages women to be confident in their bodies and love their body hair. Picture: Instagram
A body hair activist has urged women around the world to start embracing their body hair, saying it was normal thing to have and remove the taboo about body hair in society.
According to societal norms as well as medical reasons, body hair is supposed to be shaved because of the following reasons; to remove bacteria, odours and prevent infestations of lice.
But for Esther Calixte-Bea, a body hair activist, it was time to for women to untie themselves from the societal norms, calling on women to stop shaving and to love their body hair.
The body hair activist says that choosing not to shave is a choice, to unfollow unrealistic beauty standards, not to harm your body to look like someone you are not and not to hate yourself as she shared on an Instagram caption.
Calixte-Bea, creates content to bring awareness about body hair and embracing it instead of shaving it.
On a recent Instagram reel, she shared her story as to why she stopped shaving and started embracing her body hair.
“I started embracing my body hair in 2019 when I created the lavender project. And in that project, I created this lavender coloured dress that showed my chest hair for the first time. I started really being confident about my body hair, working on my self-esteem, using self-affirmations.
“Body hair is a big taboo, and it is important to question these things because all women have body hair. I became a body hair activist after seeing a lot of positive comments and I got a lot of dms from women all over the world, sharing their experience about body hair.
“I knew that it was something important because I myself wasn't seeing that kind of representation so I continued on social media to post pictures of my body hair and create content around it to help women remove shame and to feel comfortable in their natural bodies.” she said.
Calixte-Bea is also an artist that paints women that are hairy to create the representation as well through art.
She also mentioned that beauty needed to be redefined by looking at something on bodies that was unique and embrace that.
Even though there are medical reasons as to why people should shave, it is also important to educate why some people, specifically women because there are alot of women out there who are living with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.
PCOS is a common hormone problem amongst women which regulates high levels of androgens which causes excess hair growth, infertility, acne, irregular menstrual periods and weight gain.
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