Clean, 2021
Various hair from my body from head to toe, soap

The different types of hair from my body lie suspended in a clear soap. I still remember the utter confusion and disdain when my mother first told me I was expected to shave the hair from my body. Why? I thought. Why bother with such rituals over something that my body provides naturally? My father’s body was covered in it, wasn’t it? I did not like the way it felt. The burn on my razored skin. The weird smoothness of my legs and arms as if I was still a child. Tedious. And yet I watched others around me start the ritual as well. Sneer at hairy legs as if they were something dirty. A boyfriend remarked on my mustache and I still remember the awful way my upper lip broke out in hundreds of micro pimples, mirroring the soft hairs in painful bumps after I asked my aunt to wax it for me. Never again.