WASTE LESS, LIVE MORE: BAMBAW
After all of my years on this Earth I’m finally learning to embrace myself fully. Over this last year I’ve taken the steps towards looking after my mind and body with as much love as I give others. I’ve often sidelined and forgotten to take care of myself, running myself ragged; building myself up only to break again, and again. During this time I’ve learned a great deal about myself, experiencing endurance and learning to heal, be vulnerable and grow. Most of all, and most importantly I’ve learned that life is way too short to be fighting yourself every day.
When I was given the opportunity to feature Bambaw on my socials and website I knew I wanted to use it as an opportunity to speak about self love, self care and the importance of choosing what we do with our own bodies. The world constantly tries to take us from ourselves, and sell us right back in a ‘prettier’ or ‘more marketable’ package. And now, more than ever, we’re constantly confronted with curated versions of people on platforms feeding us filters and starving us of reality. Capitalism and a lot of the beauty industry is built on insecurities and the idea of the perfect body.
This unattainable and unrealistic standard of existence is not only tiring but incredibly dangerous, and it has always been something which revolved and rotated around in my subconscious; peeking out when I felt most vulnerable. There were so many points during my teenage years in particular when I was ashamed of my body and wanted to pull, bend, suck and push it up so that it would be appealing to others; I never stopped to think about how I wanted it to look to myself.
One of the most controversial and analysed aspects of the body is; hair. Constantly removed, plucked, shaved, criticised and viewed as ‘unclean’. We have fostered a social understanding that it’s okay to joke about it (think; ‘won’t be shaving in the winter’ memes) as long as we are actually going to shave it or strip it away. Often we’re conditioned to remove it so we look like a smoother and better or more confident version of ourselves, and most of the time it is so we can be consumed by others. This conversation alienates the varied lived experiences and cultural nuances of body hair, how and why we choose to keep it or don’t, and consequentially completely others us from ourselves. We curate our bodies through the lens of another person, for their viewing pleasure.
From all my academic time spent analysing our social understanding of body hair from those of us who shave always, shave never and everyone in between – one thing stood out to me; a lot of my life was spent shaving, but not a lot of it was spent shaving for myself. When I decided to claim my body back, I fully felt empowered to make own choices with my body hair; I could shave when I felt like it and leave it when I didn’t. I am privileged to be in a position where I am free to make those choices but as with all forms of shaming and oppressing women’s bodies (and of course even more so for BIOPC and the trans and non binary community) there are many individuals who are completely ostracised or harmed because of their body hair. Hopefully, through shedding light on it as a normal thing many of us experience we can keep having conversations and pushing for a more inclusive and equal understanding of body hair as something which belongs to us, and is ours to do with as we feel. So, with all that said, the question remains; to shave or not to shave? and the answer is – it’s your choice because your body is yours and for you first.
P A P E R M A C H E M I N D
Thank you so much to Bambaw for supporting this piece of writing and gifting me their vegan sustainable safety razor. For more of their products you can browse their website here and keep up with all of their really beautiful posts on Instagram. If you’re looking for a sustainable swap I’d highly recommend it and you can shop the one I have featured here – plus, for those of you in Galway you can also pick one up in our local eco refill store, The Filling Station.
Images are by the wonderful Julia Monard
