My parents first met in high school and then dropped out of UC Berkeley together. They began growing plants—mostly cacti and succulents—in their backyard and then, to make a living, sold them to local grocery stores and via mail-order catalogues.
My mom never wore any image-altering materials—no makeup, deodorant, perfume, push-up bras, or high heels. She has refused antiaging creams and would never dream of fillers. (When she read this, she said, “What are fillers?” Sheesh!) She didn’t even shave her legs or armpits, and still doesn’t to this day. I thought all that was normal female behavior until late elementary school, when I noticed that other moms didn’t have a great black muff under their arms when they waved their children in from the playground. I imagined that astronauts could spot my mom from space. “Houston, we have a problem—there appear to be two errant black holes near San Diego’s suburbs.”
While I felt proud of her uniqueness, I also felt terrified of being ridiculed because of it. I explained to her that it was perfectly possible to wave at me less zealously while gluing her elbow to her side.
So for a long time, I didn’t know a lot of woman things. In my twenties, I thought that women tipped the wax lady to keep her quiet.
My father, meanwhile, turned his nose up at anything he deemed unnatural. He hated perfume and artificial scents of any kind. When I tried a spritz of my friend’s bottle of White Musk from the Body Shop, he screwed up his face and rolled the car windows down. When he caught me wearing lipstick, he looked at me like I’d just murdered a giant cuddly panda bear to use its innards as war paint.
Growing up, I had a different concept of femininity. I came to think that artificially enhancing my appearance in any way showed a lack of self-acceptance, that it meant I wasn’t strong enough to be who I really was. All the girls out there who were wearing makeup, dyeing their hair, and covering their stink were frauds. I, who stepped forth into the world doused in her artisanal BO, was real. Of course, keeping it real doesn’t mean that I didn’t often feel uncomfortable. I found myself in a constant battle between self-righteousness and shame. Eventually I learned that one’s identity can be complemented, not always concealed, by how one chooses to express oneself superficially.
Ultimately, I matured in an environment that made me hyperaware of our social norms because I was constantly conscious of how I was never managing to meet them. Though I now partake in many of the beauty practices that I grew up shunning, maybe it’s because of my upbringing that I always catch myself asking, “But why?”
Then again, I’m not sure I can blame my parents for everything. Their aversion to razors probably doesn’t account for why I spent the last couple of days mining modern literature for hemorrhoid references or spent an hour unwinding after a rough week by watching Dr. Pimple Popper’s blackhead-extraction videos on YouTube.
In any case, I’m not saying that I’ve got it together more than any other woman; it is precisely my own volatile and apprehensive relationship with my own body parts, such as my bowels, bunions, belly button, and copious sweat glands, that has compelled me to go forth in search of answers from everyone from the goddess worshippers of Bainbridge Island to the top lice experts in Denmark.
This book won’t cure a bad hair day or a yeast infection, or anything else for that matter, but it is my hope that by holding up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, and nipples, this book might serve as a small step toward replacing self-flagellation with awe, shame with pride, and vag odor with, well, vag odor is kind of inevitable. But get this, PMS might actually be a superpower!
It was the turn of the century. I was nineteen years old and a student at UCLA, a school bathed in milky young complexions and spicy Mexican food. I joined friends for dinner at a taco joint on Sepulveda Boulevard, where a dark and deeply handsome young waiter named Gustavo took considerable notice of my face. I will never forget that name, Gustavo. We flirted over the horchata and made googly eyes over the guacamole. My friends evaporated into the atmosphere until it seemed like there were only two of us left in the room. Every time he passed our table, he glanced furtively in my direction, and I returned his interest with the dividend of a smile and the promise of much, much more. It even seemed possible that, at some point in the evening’s marathon mating dance, we would speak about more than the Thursday-night specials.
Finally, the check—and our moment—arrived. Gustavo placed the bill in front of my friends and leaned down to my expectant ear. I tingled with excitement about what he might whisper. A phone number … an address … a marriage proposal …
And then they came tumbling from his luscious lips, like poop from a piñata—five simple words that have seared themselves forever into my memory.
“I like your blond mustache,” he said.
It is now eleven years later, and I’m on the cusp of marriage to a wonderful man who is covered in hair. He not only makes me feel happy; he also makes me feel smooth. I am writing this story for him, because I have something to tell him.
Dave, I have something to tell you.
I am a bearded lady.
No, not like those women you see at the circus. More like those women you see on the street, in magazines, at the corner coffee shop. Yes, Dave, they’re bearded, too. You don’t realize it, though, because we are all (except for quite a few Southeast Asians; I’ll get to that later) engaged in an endless process of removing the additional and unwanted hair we inexplicably, annoyingly came with.
You see, evolution played a cruel trick on the supposedly fairer sex. It involves chin hair, nipple hair, mustache hair, thigh hair, and—yes—even toe hair. Dave, by God, it’s true—we have fucking toe hair! Just like you! But the difference is that we spend millions, no, make that billions, of dollars to have it waxed, lasered, shaved, and otherwise removed from our bodies so that when you see us naked, you won’t run screaming into the night.
I’m telling you this now, before we get married, because I am, unfortunately, plagued with two parallel conditions: an inordinate amount of body hair and a genetic predisposition toward brutal honesty. These would seem to be contradictory forces, particularly since I’ve spent thousands of my own precious dollars in a futile attempt to look as though I’m not a hairy beast. I strapped myself to a wall in Spain and endured the pain of hot wax; I went for monthly laser treatments from a doctor in Bangkok who almost turned my face into a failed lab experiment; I own enough pink disposable razors to affect the quarterly income of Gillette. I’ve scraped, shaved, yanked, tweezed, and plucked nearly every visible surface of my body, not to mention certain sections I discuss only with my therapist.
I guess I’m telling you this also because I’m trying to figure out why I care. I know you love me no matter what. I realize no one—even you—will ever see the silky brunette strands that occasionally emerge from my nipple. I acknowledge that I’m not the victim of some cruel hormonal joke; I know that plenty of women have it worse than I do.
That raven-haired beauty in front of me at Vinyasa Yoga on Nineteenth Street, Thursdays at four p.m., sports actual muttonchops. But why, when I look in the mirror, do I see Roddy McDowall in Planet of the Apes? How can I rid myself of an obsession borne by women since the dawn of time? What weapon do I have to combat the societal standard that all women must be smooth, supple, hairless creatures? When will I be permitted to let my hair down? Not my head hair, but my armpit hair, my facial hair, my leg hair, that little “happy trail.” And is that even what I want?
You love me for who I am, right? So