It’s hairy awarey time!

Woo! It’s the first of June and despite the weather it’s time to… well just let your hair down. I attended a wedding at the weekend and I was fully hairy as the chief bridesmaid. Photographic evidence in due course! Love to all xxx

2011 Hairy Awarey is here!!

Hello hello and welcome back to Hairy Awarey for the second year running! You know the drill, we like our body hair but want to show it more, so June and July are the months to get out your summer clothes knowing other women are doing it too. It’s a chance to free yourself from long black leggings in 25 degrees of heat and a chance to meet & talk to other women about their body hair – yay!

I hope you like the slightly updated look of the site – we now have pictures linked in with our flickr group (please join and upload your photos!) how technological we’re getting here at Hairy Towers.

So, it’s not June yet but it’s time to put those razors away so you can have something to show off during the campaign and hopefully beyond.

A little hairy story: I saw a few shocked faces when I went parading around all over the place during the last bank holiday weekend showing off my fabulous paintballing bruises. I suddenly realised long after the fact that some of that shock might not have been to do with my obvious agony but rather that the viewers in question weren’t really used to seeing a female hairy leg. I remember clearly when I used to feel like that, but I’ve no idea when it stopped! Perhaps it was June and July last year….

Have a good one!!!

You guys in Brazil need to start your own campaign!

When Julie Bindel published her piece in the Guardian I was ecstatic to find 577 hits for this blog in one day. When the story was picked up by a blog in Brazil, there were 878 hits. Now all my comments and interview requests are coming from Brazil – you lot need to organise your own campaign, and quickly!

I’m glad I’ve helped galvanise thought on this issue over with our South American sisters, you can easily do what I’ve done. I’m just a normal woman with a job and lots of other things to do. I just got a free blog and spread the word amongst my friends using Facebook. It’s easy to do. You can do it too.

Here’s to the revolution.

We’re in the Guardian!

Hi all, just sharing a link to an article by Julie Bindel on women and (facial) hair that mentions Hairy Awarey:

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/20/women-facial-hair

Here’s the Facebook group if you want to join:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119684894719876

Well done every body!

How was it for you?

So, June and July are safely behind us and Hairy Awarey is over. We had no rally, no march, no flash mob, no big protest rather perhaps a quiet awakening in hearts and minds.

Please comment or email otters_juggle@yahoo.com with you stories.

…and 23% don’t give a shit

A pertinent advert perhaps for Hairy Awarey. It’s good to know that if you don’t shave your under arms, you not only save money on all that shaving equipment, you don’t need this new Dove deodorant either.

There are so many ways to ignore/rip the piss out of this advert as a Hairy woman. Firstly, they assume we all shave, so the hairy woman can happily imagine tripping this advert over and watching it fall flat on its face with glee within ten seconds of the ad.

The ad then makes a nice mental leap to the fact that “calm and caring” deodorant is good news for your love life, or at least, good news for pillow fighting with a man in your underwear. Luckily, many of us have a love life that either involves a)no-one b) a woman or c)a man who will pillow fight you no matter what status your armpits.

But I gotta say I love the questionable statistics in the ad. Of 2,550 women interviewed (who knows how or where but it’s normally readers of cosmo that have helpfully provided their telephone numbers on free gift coupons) only 77% “feel sexier when their underarms look good”. Aside from the fact that “look good” is a highly subjective phrase and has nothing to do with the Dove product advertised, that means that 586 women actually answered no when asked this bizarre question.

586 Cosmo readers, I salute you!

Including everyone with Hairy Awarey

Some of you may be positive that you are not going to participate in Hairy Awarey because you just can’t give up that silky skin feeling or you just plain don’t want to. But I think that does not exclude you from Hairy Awarey as there is nothing to stop you from going along to any get together or flaunting session as a non-hairy participant. Since this is consciousness raising the discussion is one of the most important things and adding your voice to that discussion is vital.

If you’re a man you may feel a bit alienated by Hairy Awarey. Please don’t! Your voice is essential too, whether in discussion  or something as simple as telling your friends/partner that you like their hair, which is so good to hear.  Please don’t derail any conversations by reminding us that you have to shave every day, we know you do and there are various grow your beard days/events in many countries for you to join in with, plus we at Hairy Awarey lurve beards – so stop moaning and stop shaving yourselves. Anyway, all the women stepping out in hair will need all the help they can get and as man friends you are very well placed to do just that.

Hairy for all!

Read all about it

The Facebook group for Hairy Awarey has gone live and we have 18 members in the first day – we’re on our way! Here’s the link so you can join: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119684894719876

One of the most important parts of Hairy Awarey is the “flash-mob” effect of exposing the general public to our beautiful body hair and also the knowledge for all our participants that others are doing the same. So if you are planning to participate in Hairy Awarey it would be great if you could drop us a line at otters_juggle@yahoo.com or leave a comment on the blog to tell us so, whether as an individual, a group of friends or a network. That way we’ll all know we’re not alone.

watch this space

What can I do to celebrate hairy awarey?

Hairy Awarey isn’t hard to join in with. But there is one thing you have to do in preparation and that’s grow some hair. This act alone may be inspiring for you. If so, fantastic!  Now that you’ve participated in Hairy Awarey you can honestly say that your future hair removal choices are just that, a choice.

However, the aim of Hairy Awarey is a hair consciousness-raising session and if you can grow your hair and show it off too then we’re on our way. This may just be not caring about whether your nearest and dearest catch a glimpse of that armpit, or it may be going the whole hog in public.  Try something small at first and then build up.

When I first dared to show my hair (unshaved legs and *gasp* shorts) I had a surge of nerves when it came to the big day (This was the first of many incidences when I questioned if not-shaving is really a choice for most women). But, as I walked around day after day I realised that not only was no-one approaching me to tell me off about my hairy legs but no-one was even the slight bit interested, or even able to see my hairy legs if they were. And this will hopefully be one of the outcomes of Hairy Awarey – realising that one’s own fears about showing hair in public are much stronger than any societal sanctions.

Aware of our Hair!

Yay to the first post on the Hairy Awarey home page!

Thanks for coming. I thought I’d better get this set up soon since June & July are up and coming and if you’re planning on participating in Hairy Awarey you may need time to grow you hair back. If you haven’t already, why not pop by the About page to see what Hairy Awarey is all about.

So why have we started Hairy Awarey? Well there is the prevailing feeling among women that to publicly show their body hair is unacceptable (reasons and debates about this in another post I think!) After seeing a blog post about this very thing, the comments made extremely interesting reading. Some women liked to remove their hair, others didn’t and pretty much everyone said they didn’t mind what others chose to do. However many of them claimed they would rather be more hairy than they are now but felt the wider world would not allow it. Many said they would let themselves be hairy if they saw other people doing it, or would only be brave enough if someone else did it too. The Hairy Awarey crowd have always tried to show their hair, in a small scale mission to show the world that hair is acceptable, but it seemed something a bit more was needed.

So, we at Hairy Awarey are encouraging everyone to show their hair all at once so that women can be free of this taboo forever. We’re doing it, many people are doing it and this is an excuse to get together with your hairy friends and do it too. It may be that you “grow” but don’t “show”, it may be that you’ve got some growing to do. It may be that you’re a shower (good on you!) but there’s still a final taboo to overcome. It may be that you can’t ever imagine yourself growing or showing, but perhaps you’ll ask the people around you what they think about it, and you may be surprised.

Whatever you do for Hairy Awarey, do it together and do it with pride.