She had grown her hair countless times
before, always ultimately caving and shaving
for work or wedding or any event where
pits might have been on display and she couldn’t face
the derisive looks of dismay when eyes caught
a glimpse of hair that screamed too loud
mutely declared refusal to conform to perfectly
acceptable gender norms
foreshadowed a farewell to society, headed for
heathen hippie living with no sense of propriety
waved in matted protest to the male gaze, curling
in caution of simmering feminist rage
unveiled as a fully-fledged exhibitionist display,
pheromone fuelled and set to scare men away
or perhaps it was just that she’d
let herself go
- somewhere
lost deep in that hideous forest of hair
because apparently
she no longer cared.
She found time and again that she just couldn’t stand
the shame and strain of trying to explain
the reason for hair that she didn’t choose
to put there at all, quite the opposite –
only chose
to leave it alone.
this time though, determined not to surrender
her pits pink and bare but brave her way
through the sniggers and stares when
people she neither knows nor cares for see
that one something about her they
can’t comprehend. because, truth is,
whatever they might guess, there’s some
truth to it, yes. though
the one mistake that they should
never make is that she just doesn’t care
because bloody hell
it takes a gut-load of grit to set foot
out there as a woman with
visible body-hair who with every flash
of skin makes a multitude of mute statements
to the world - a refusal to fit in
to the ticky-tacky box into which she
was squeezed until she could hardly
breathe, that she no longer wants or needs
that hallowed male gaze which she was trained to crave.
She’s hairy and she’s hers
and this time she’s not shaving herself short
which for many
is a terrifying thought.
Laura Cliss received her BA in English and History from Sheffield Hallam University before training as a primary teacher and spending a number of years teaching in the UK and Europe. She has recently moved back home to Cambridgeshire to start her MA in creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University in September. She writes poetry and short stories about anything and everything that inspires her – feminism, feelings, memories, imagination ... and sometimes cats.