Megan and I sat with legs dangling over the two-foot tall brick wall surrounding our elementary school. It was late spring, t-shirt and shorts weather, just before we were let out for summer vacation. Scooting over to let another friend squeeze in, I accidently swiped Megan’s bare thigh with the back of my hand. I noticed how smooth it was; this was odd to me. My legs still prickled with strawberry blonde hairs from ankle to thigh. With two fingers I rubbed Megan’s leg, on purpose this time. “So soft,” I said matter-of-factly.
Megan was the youngest girl I knew who started shaving her legs. We were in fourth grade, nine or ten years old. None of our other girlfriends shaved or wore makeup or deodorant; most of us wore bras only to avoid embarrassment. In gym class, the popular girls would snap the bra straps of girls squatting in front of them in line for relays. They’d draw shapes on our backs as they chanted: “Circle turtle. Square turtle. Snapping turtle!” and tugged on our bras through our t-shirts. We all wanted bras for the cool girls to snap.
But shaving had more taboos than bra-wearing. Moms thought it was precious buying their daughters Hello Kitty training bras, but not razors. It was as if buying a daughter a razor was giving her the power to shave off childhood, to put on sexy big-girl legs to strut around.
My sister Sam started shaving when she was eleven. I assumed, as tradition dictated, that I would start shaving when I was eleven too. So I waited. The summer after fourth grade, when I was ten, my sister and I rode to Uncle Tom’s lake cottage in the backseat next to Aunt Joanne, a petite woman of fifty or so. She asked Sam about school; she asked me about my legs.
I answered with the enthusiasm, “Sam started shaving when she was eleven, so I’ll get to shave once I turn eleven.” Joanne did not know what to say.
Not far after my eleventh birthday, in the spring as the weather started heating up, I asked my mom for a razor. I wrote her a letter, one she later used as a bookmark for novels laying around the house.
She came up to my room. “Hon-ey. Why would you want to shave your legs?”
I remember her stroking my leg the same way I had Megan’s two years ago at recess.
“Your hair is so blonde – no one can notice it anyway,” she said. My mom had dark hair; I got my fair skin and hair from my father. Shaving was practical for a girl with dark hair, not a girl with leg hair that blended into her flesh, she assured me.
“But I notice it!” I pulled my legs away from her and tucked them underneath me. “Sam got to shave when she was eleven. Why can’t I?”
“I just don’t think you’re ready.”
It remained like that for weeks, but I never stopped asking. Finally Mom gave in, but not completely. She let me use Nair hair remover, a white goop she expected me to lather all over my legs. But for soft legs, I would do anything.
I changed into my bathing suit that Sunday morning, when Mom handed me the bottle of Nair. I perched one leg up on the side of the bathtub and began applying it. I tried to wait longer than the estimated six minutes, but the stinging sensation kept me from it. I rinsed both legs in the bathtub, dried them, and spent another six minutes admiring my new legs.
I grabbed my pool bag and strutted downstairs. Pushing through the screened door, I said goodbye to my stepdad, and rolled off on my scooter, heading to the neighborhood pool. I got a half-block away when I noticed a glistening hair around my ankle – then another. I rolled back home and ran up to the bathroom.
My stepdad called after me, but I told him I forgot something. I lathered more Nair around my ankles. I found a few more stray hairs and drowned them in the lotion. By the time I left my house again for the pool, I had tiny red bumps up and down my legs from an allergic reaction.
I told my mom about the bumps; she told me to stop using Nair twice a day. I had hoped the rash would convince her to buy me a razor. She didn’t.
My underarm hair grew in later than my leg hairs. Finally, my mom knew how impractical it would be for me to wait six minutes for Nair to dry with arms straight above my head. She gave in and let me shave – but just under my arms. The pleading and prodding continued. In time she gave up the fight and I shaved my whole leg – ankle to thigh – with a big-girl razor.
The purple Schick razor conveniently suctioned itself to the shower wall. I bathed twice a day, honored to use it.