Member-only story
The Power Of Shame
March 2022
Disclaimer: In this article, I refer to my childhood as a person who was socialised female with gendered terms such as “girl”. I cracked my trans egg quite a few years ago, so applying these terms to my current life is inappropriate, however, I have used gendered language here as that is how I identified at the time, and misogyny was a major contributor to these experiences.
I used to get this a lot. I’m Greek/Turk/Cypriot, my skin is gold and my hair is one shade browner than black. My arms are covered in it, my legs are covered in it, I have a snail trail, a moustache, sideburns. My armpits look like grown-out white girl armpits after I’ve trimmed them. The 3cm band of hair around my head of ‘hair-eyebrow-eyebrow-hair’ has no gaps.
So, of course people noticed.
The other girls at school noticed. I could see the boys noticing. My cousins (also Greeks, go figure*) would loudly notice how hairy I am.
*Of course, by “go figure”, I mean “our western-centric colonial culture of Traits Of Whiteness = Supreme Beauty is so prevalent and brainwashed into our young people that racist sexism not only comes from white people onto POC, it comes from POC to POC, too. #InternalisedIt”
Being young, impressionable, ashamed of my body and desperate to stop being bullied, I shaved. No longer were my legs “hairy ape legs”, no longer were my armpits “so gross wtf??”, no longer…
