Words by: Parisa Sarmady 
Art by: Steph Bridges

Simply put, puberty is an awkward time in everyone’s life. It is GROSS and it is FRUSTRATING, and it is UNPLEASANT. The worst part… it’s unavoidable.

Now multiply that same experience by a hundred! That’s pretty much what growing up as a Person of Colour (POC) in predominantly White spaces feels like.

Now, I’m not here to invalidate others’ experiences or to claim that one experience is ‘harder’ than another. Instead, I want to acknowledge the distinct social pressures and challenges faced by children of colour in these spaces, challenges that their White counterparts may not confront. 

A great television example of this disparity in experience can be found in HULU’s cringe comedy ‘Pen15.’ The show stars its creators, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, who, as fully grown adults, play 13-year-old versions of themselves in middle school.  

Throughout the show, Erskine and Konkle’s friendship is used to exemplify how the situations they encountered growing up affect them in different ways. Erskine, who is of mixed ethnicity, is often confronted with subtle microaggressions and public alienation that her character can’t fully comprehend the reason for. While watching, I found Erskine’s experience to resonate with my own. 

Growing up half Middle Eastern meant body hair from an early age, and mind you, not just a bit, but a LOT of it. As a child, I wasn’t really aware that I visually stood out at times, especially in shorts and skirts. I vividly remember walking into my classroom in my new primary school, and all 20 pairs of eyes were glued to my hairy legs instead of my face, as if they were some type of unseen curiosity. I couldn’t understand what made my legs so different to everyone else’s. 

By my early high school years, my childlike awareness rapidly vanished, and I became painfully aware of my existence in every single room. I used to dread summer as that meant I had to wear the school uniform dress, which, alone, was hideous, but paired with my hairy legs was an actual nightmare. To make it worse, I wasn’t allowed to shave yet and had a Timothée Chalament-style stache growing on my upper lip. So, as you can imagine, it was absolute chaos. My body hair became so character-defining to my peers that I soon became known as the “hairy girl” in the cohort. So many people would casually comment on it when they were around me. This completely and utterly annihilated any sense of self-esteem I previously had. For a long time, I only saw my body as vile.

Despite my shaving and waxing efforts in my late teens, I still felt negatively towards my body hair. It wasn’t until I started to casually notice body hair on other people that I began to realise how normal body hair truly is. If everyone else has it, why did I feel so disgusted towards mine?

Now being 21, my attitude toward my body hair has drastically changed. I think, like most teenagers, I put myself under a microscope and exhaustively over-analysed every single inch of myself. Which, as you can guess, detrimentally impacted my perception of myself. Additionally, observing the evolving conversation around body hair has hugely helped me normalise such a universal aspect of being human. Whilst I still struggle with body hair on myself, I find it quite empowering to see it on other people. 

It’s a lesson in unlearning, I suppose, and I for one am ready to grow, body hair and all.