The chat with Kat took me back to one I had with my grandmother earlier in the year. I was sitting on her sofa, when she told me she didn’t wear singlet tops because of how she didn’t like how her arms looked. She told me people didn’t want to see arms like hers when they walked down the street. I asked her why it mattered what people thought, why everything had to be nice, slim, unwrinkled, unblemished, why everything had to be “beautiful”. I had naively thought before this conversation that as you got older, not caring about what people thought got infinitely easier. And maybe it is easier but still hard. I told my grandmother and Kat about what had happened to me over New Years’ Eve.

I’m a queer person, and a visibly queer person. I have a curly mullet, a peachy mo and beard and thigh pubes to be envied only on the Red Rattler dance floor.

At the queer festival, I attended over New Years’ I was approached by a random man and asked about what genitals I had in my pants. Feeling staunch and supported in this supposedly queer safe haven, I told him he wasn’t allowed to ask me that. His partner later accused me of “grinding on her man”. While I was comforted by fellow queers in a corner, my friend spent 45 minutes tracking the couple down with security.

I told my grandmother, and Kat, that these people probably didn’t like looking at me, enough in fact to question my genitalia and become verbally aggressive. They didn’t think I was beautiful, they saw me as some undefined creature that threatened their ideas of gender, of normal and of beauty. But, the question I asked of these two important and feminist women in my life, was why does it matter? These people were rude and intimidating, and so their opinions on me, my body hair, my gender, was meaningless to me. 

I stopped shaving everything almost 2 years ago, I can’t really remember now if it was a conscious decision or if I just got lazy and then realised, oh I’m doing this now. I haven’t looked back. I shaved off so much time in my adolescence and 20s attempting to tame my wild leg, pubic and underarm hair. I suffered so much anxiety and shame prior to beach trips, ballet classes and every day of high school, God forbid there was one hair missed or shaving rash obvious past the line of my bikini. 

Working with kids for all of my teenage and adult years has given me ample practice in explaining my body, gender expression and why I’m different to many of the adults in their lives. I’ve had kids suggest my spiky leg stubble could be used as spears in battle, I’ve answered the “are you a girl or a boy” and “why do you have a moustache” questions every day and most recently been propositioned to be a “bearded lady”. For many kids, I had to explain why I had leg hair, that their mothers shaved, waxed or lasered theirs off, and that because of fear of pain, loss of money and time, I decided to keep mine. I’ve had kids sit on my lap absentmindedly stroke my leg hair while their separation anxiety abates and I’ve had them tell me the reason I can’t make a fart noise with my armpit is “because you have hair there”. 

At first, as a 19 year old, I struggled with these questions, felt defensive and occasionally upset. But then I realised the importance and power of my presence, my ability to show and explain with kindness and patience how and why bodies are so different. And what I would have given for someone who looked like me at that age. 

Although body image and fucking the patriarchy was something I struggled with for years, particularly during adolescence, there were other insecurities I never had or even thought of before others brought it up. I remember a co-worker applauding my bravery for wearing brightly coloured and patterned tights, explaining to me that she only wore black because she didn’t want to look bigger than she was. There are so many layers to this, but I remember feeling upset that someone would be so conscious and afraid of the opinions of others that they would censor their self-expression and ban themselves from wearing things.