TikToker Cherry, who posts under the handle @ittybittycherry, has said she loves her body hair – and the fact that it inspires other women to feel comfortable in their skin.
The content creator told PinkNews she initially stopped shaving, embracing her natural body instead, after getting requests online. “I just [wondered]: why am I shaving anything at all? It’s inconvenient,” she said.
“I hate razor bumps and I was taking extra, uncomfortably long showers shaving. That’s time I no longer waste.”
Cherry has said in the past that she has had boyfriends who asked her to shave, which made her uncomfortable. “It feels almost creepy that guys expect women to be completely hairless, because the only women who are naturally hairless are [under the age of] 12,” she said.
The influencer finds it “odd that society has made this something that’s not preferred, but expected”. But being natural with her body hair has led to a lot of online hate.
“Women and men tend to say that having body hair is unhygienic, which is crazy because natural is how we’re meant to be.”
She puts the hate down to “misunderstanding, lack of education” and “lack of representation of hairy women in the media.”
Her sister was the first to completely stop shaving, which helped Cherry to see it as normal. As an Indian women she has “always been hairy”, she added.
“I used to feel insecure about it when I was younger, but as I got older it just became very normal.”
The best part about not shaving is that “it inspires other women to hopefully do the same and feel comfortable in their body without feeling they have to shave”, she said. And if someone doesn’t like her with body hair, they shouldn’t look at it.