Whether she’s walking the red carpet in a barley there dress or protesting a women’s rights issue in D.C., Emily Ratajkowski knows a thing or two about embracing her feminine side. Now she’s doing it through armpit hair.
For the Harper’s Bazaar September issue, the 28-year-old wrote an essay on what it means to be hyper feminine. Accompanying the piece is a black and white portrait of the model posting in a lacy bra with her hands behind her blown-out hair, revealing her unshaved underarms.
She comments on the idea of women’s body hair in the article using hers as an example, writing: “If I decide to shave my armpits or grow them out, that’s up to me. For me, body hair is another opportunity for women to exercise their ability to choose — a choice based on how they want to feel and their associations with having or not having body hair.”
She continues that while some days she likes to shave, on others she feels sexier when she lets her natural hair grow. But whatever she does it’s her decision.
“There is no right answer, no choice that makes me more or less of a feminist, or even a ‘bad feminist,’ to borrow from Roxane Gay,” EmRata wrote in the essay. “As long as the decision is my choice, then it’s the right choice. Ultimately, the identity and sexuality of an individual is up to them and no one else.”
This idea of celebrating female body hair has become more and more mainstream over the past couple of years. As recently as June, Halsey covered The Hot Issue of Rolling Stone with unshaven underarms.
When she posted the image to her social media feeds, other A-listers chimed in in support. “Here for this armpit hair,” Coachella performer Maggie Rogers commented on Instagram.
“I loooove the fact that they didn’t edit the armpits like most magazines would do,” Swedish singer Zara Larsson wrote in a Tweet. “Women are not little babies who don’t have body hair.
