Many women spend many hours every year plucking, shaving and waxing their body hair, including, facial hair. The prevailing fashion almost everywhere in the world is for women to avoid facial hair and have neatly shaped eyebrows. This is not only time consuming, but can cost a huge amount of money. Many women are now though starting to regard this as unnecessary and anti-feminist, saying it refers to a time when women were judged solely for appearing a certain way.
One Danish woman advancing the cause against removing facial hair is Eldina Jaganjac, a tutor from Copenhagen, who has become somewhat of a celebrity online for keeping her face natural. She stopped plucking hair at the start of lockdown in 2020. She says that since she stopped removing her facial hair, she has received many compliments from both men and women but that she has also faced abuse on the streets, almost exclusively from men. She says however, that this is a great way of weeding out people you wouldn't want to be around in the first-plac,e and is especially good for avoiding 'bad dates.
She told Unilad:
"Before I let my unibrow grow out, I did feel like there were extremely limited options to how women were supposed to look. If a man doesn't shave and doesn't pluck his eyebrows, no one notices or comments and it's nothing out of the ordinary. Just like many other women, I have learned to police myself. For instance, I used to not feel comfortable going outside unless my eyebrows were the accepted small size, and I wouldn't go to the gym unless my legs were clean shaven."
She continued:
"Now, I've chosen to focus on the tasks and goals that I need to have done and less on how I appear while doing them and whether people like me or not, because I probably won't ever see them again, and if I do, I still don't care. It was uncomfortable at first, but if some people have nothing to do other than yell at strangers, then so be it."
Eldina now has almost 10,000 followers on Instagram. On one of her posts, she conveyed her message:
"Now I feel like I have to say something smart or inspiring. I'm happy that my point came across, even though the attention has been overwhelming. And please just remember, we all look different. Everybody looking alike would have been creepy and very very impractical (Imagine the scenario!) Whatever choice you make is okay, just Think about who you're making it for. I Think we put too much emphasis on looks in our society, and see different bodies as having different values and meanings… I'm not big on quotes, but I like this one. Don't let your mind bully your body."
A post shared by Eldina Jaganjac (@eldina_jaganjac)
[h/t: Unilad]
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