I received a message from a woman today thanking me for my article I wrote last year on: "Reclaiming Natural Beauty, Body Hair, and Women's Radical Deconditioning".
She said, "Dear Nicole, your article about body hair was very nourishing to me, and I bow in gratefulness for your courage and the fact that you voice these issues..."
~ ~ ~
What's very interesting for me to observe and see is that within the whole Goddess/Divine Feminine/Feminine Empowerment movement it's still very rare for me to meet a woman that chooses to be natural, in allowing her hair to simply be on her own body.
The societal programming and conditioning around beauty and femininity being associated with 'hairlessness' is so DEEPLY ingrained into our collective psyche from such a young age.
We are taught and programmed that to be beautiful, feminine, and attractive that this means having a hairless body.
The truth is that we live in an adolescent society, that glorifies youth and is very adolescent in itself, as opposed to living in a world filled with initiated adults and elders.
We live in a world where the majority of people are still very much adolescent, and the ripening of a mature civilization rooted in true stewardship and mature adulthood is much less rare, then the norm, at this time on Earth.
A girl is hairless naturally.
A woman has hair on her body.
I, as a woman, stopped shaving already 6 years ago because my soul was screaming for me to wake up. It didn't feel right to my being. I felt like I was betraying myself, and mutilating my own body just to fit in to this feminine beauty standard, an artificial construct of beauty.
And I can tell you that as a woman that loves to be natural, and fully and wholeheartedly LOVES and EMBRACES every single piece of hair on my own body—there is no greater testament and embodiment of feminine empowerment then when I see a woman that can stand in this world unapologetically being fully her natural, wild, and pure beautiful self in a world that blast's us with shame for being hairy.
If you truly shave because it FEELS joyful, alive, and inspiring for you every time you do this to your body—I honor your deepest truth.
And if you shave, because you can't imagine not shaving, I really encourage you to deeply inquire into the reason you do this ritual of shaving. Does it really feel natural to shave? How does your body feel through this act? If your legs could speak, what would they say? Are you really doing this for yourself, or to fit in and be considered 'normal' in a mainstream world that denigrates female body hair.
Try going out in the world with full hair on your legs and see what and how you feel in the world. Notice the prevalent feeling of shame you most probably will experience by simply being natural in your own body.
If we really want to talk about embodied feminine empowerment, and being a free empowered woman on this Earth, you have to liberate yourself from the shackles and chains of deeply enrooted conditionings on what it means to be a woman and reclaim your true power of being exactly what you are in the world, without feeling any impulse to modify, change, or contort your physical appearance for the sake of 'beauty and femininity'.
I honor every woman that has the courage and empowered freedom within herself to be natural, and to fullheartedly love her body exactly as it is. Shout outs to my soul sisters Molly, Ingrid and to those of you that are walking this path of radical authenticity....
In my experience, it's one of the greatest true embodiments of inner freedom and self sovereignty when I see a woman who chooses to stand in the world with love for her whole body, including her body hair, unapologetically. To radiate authentic natural beauty into the world, is a medicine we are starving for.
I choose to shine a new wave of empowered womanhood in the world, by simply embracing and loving my body exactly how it is. I don't need to shave myself to be beautiful. Every woman's body is beautiful exactly how it is, just as mens body with hair is beautiful exactly how it is—and I really wish to one day live in a world where we wake up and see that a woman's body and a man's body is wholly beautiful and perfect exactly as it is.
In this photo you can see my beautiful hair on my legs, and I love it. I am a woman, and not a girl anymore—and I will not allow society to dictate to me what is beautiful and feminine.
✨✨✨
Note: If you are interested in reading my full article and discourse I wrote on this topic, you can see my article "Reclaiming Natural Beauty, Body Hair and Women's Radical Decondioning" on my website under my Blog. ❤️
With love, Nicole 😊