i_am_morgie/InstagramA fitness blogger decided to stop shaving her body hair and revealed what it was like after three years of growth.
Morgan Mikenas is fighting the social pressure on women to keep their body hair trimmed, and encouraging people to do what makes them feel most comfortable instead.
The Indiana-born woman has defended her right to allow her own biology to take hold and let her pubic hair grow freely, empowering other women to do the same, and explaining why she will ‘will never go back’.
In her YouTube video entitled ‘Why I Don’t Shave’, Morgan said:
I guess my number one reason why I stopped was that it just took so much time.
It took so much of my time to get in the shower and have to shave everything and then wash my hair and then wash my body it’s just like another thing.
I just, one day, was like, ‘Why am I doing this anymore? This just takes so much time.’
She continued:
After I let it do its thing and grow out I just realised, ‘Oh hey this is kind of nice’. It started getting super soft.
When you shave your body hair it’s prickly and itchy and uncomfortable. So I guess that’s another reason why.
Morgan receives a lot of positive support from her 7,000 followers on Instagram for her fitness regime as well as body hair – which is great, even though her decision to stop shaving was only made to please herself.
However, there are some who don’t understand biology and have criticised her for her choices.
One YouTube commentator dubbed Morgan ‘disgusting’ and said she was a ‘monster overgrown with hair’, adding ‘I vomited from her appearance’.
Besides the fact it’s quite unbelievable people still hold these backwards views towards women’s rights and their choice to do whatever they please with their hair, shaved or unshaven, Morgan is actually living her life, healthy and happy.
Morgan recalled a time she was bullied for her body hair at school, but is now empowered to embrace a more natural look.
The fitness model also used Instagram to explain her shock when she took some schoolchildren swimming and they said she looked like a man.
Morgan is determined to carry on spreading her message of body positivity, a year after making the decision to stop shaving.
Sadly, her mission is still as important as ever.
Even supermodel and fitness fanatic Gigi Hadid was once blasted on social media for appearing in the LOVE Advent Calendar with unshaven armpits.
Showing off her fit physique and boxing moves, the 22-year-old American supermodel’s Lycra two-piece activewear, emblazoned with her own name, revealed underarm hair.
The video was shared by the liberating, progressive fashion magazine:
Cue: a backward and scarily squeamish portion of society losing their collective mind.
Another viewer insisted they had been ‘distracted’ by the look, commenting:
Her armpit hair was too distracting for me to watch the video. That should of been shaved. This magazine should of [sic] known this before shooting and releasing this video. Just not a clean look!
One apparently ‘excused’ the natural abomination by adding it may have just been the fabric ‘rubbing off’ on Gigi’s skin. Another not-so eloquent naysayer simply wrote, ‘ew’.
However, on closer inspection, which left one Instagram observer ‘shook’, a fact biologists have known since the dawn of science and women have known since the dawn of humankind: Gigi Hadid, like every women before her and after her, grows armpit hair.
Morgan is taking her fight for equality and to dispel beauty standards a step further, having refused to shave any part of her body for over a year.
The Indiana-born blogger explained her choices in a viral YouTube video:
While Morgan is not condemning those who do decide to shave, it’s refreshing to see a woman feeling comfortable in her body, despite the prevalence of absurd, one-dimensional beauty myths that she refuses to abide by.
You keep growing, Morgan!
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.