Why This Girl's Poem About Body Hair Is Going Viral
Whether you have dark, course hair or fine light hair, you most likely do some kind of hair removal on your face or your body. You might shave your legs, and/or pluck your brows, trim your bikini line and/or wax your upper lip. We all do it, but it's often done in secret, as if having hair anywhere but your head is shameful in some way, or unhygienic (it's not).
That's why poems like 22-year-old Naina Kataria's are so important. The Delhi-based writer's words are going viral because of her honesty about her body hair struggles. The poem is called "When A Man Tells Me I'm Beautiful," and paints a powerful picture of being a woman who is forced to live up to impossible beauty standards. When a man tells her she is beautiful, she thinks of the mustache she had in high school, or the unibrow she finally got rid of.
How did Naina come up with the idea for her poem? She tells Buzzfeed that it all started on a date with a guy. "We were watching this ad about razors for women when I remarked that celebrities shouldn't endorse such products because it sends out a message that one HAS to buy them to look beautiful," she says. "He replied by saying, 'OMG you're too much of a feminist.'" It made her wonder about the "unrealistic standards that we've set for beauty."
Read her entire poem, below, and check out the rest of her writings over on her Facebook page.
When a man tells me I'm beautiful I don't believe him. Instead, I relive my days in high school When no matter how good I wasI was always the girl with a moustache He doesn't know what it's like to grow up in your maternal familyWhere your body is the only one that Proudly boasts of your father's X While your mother's X sits back and pitiesIt's unladylike-nessHe doesn't know the teenagerWho filled her corners withEmpty consolations ofBeing loved for who she was- someday. He doesn't know hypocrisy.He doesn't know of the world that tells you to 'be yourself' and sells you a fair and lovely shade card in the same f****** breath He doesn't know of the hot wax and the laser whose only purpose is to replace your innocent skin with its own brand of womanhoodHe doesn't know of the veet and the bleachThat uproot your robust hair in the name of hygieneHygiene, which when followed by men makes them gay and unmanly He doesn't know how unruly eyebrows are tamed and how uni brows die a silent deathAll to preserve beautyAnd of the torturous miracles that happenInside the doors marked "WOMEN ONLY"So when a man calls me beautifulI throw at him, a smile; a smile that remainedAfter everything the strip pulled awayAnd I dare himTo wait Till my hair grows back.
Follow @Seventeen on Instagram.
