Fuzzy Logic

Once considered a beauty taboo, patchy underarms and furry legs are finding favor with a new generation of women.Maya Singer reports on the hairy situation.

I WAS ELEVEN WHEN I began to notice the swimmers—teenagers on the team at my local pool. They had a ritual before big meets: The girls would grow out their body hair, and then, the night before all-county or state championships, they’d gather with the boys in one locker room and shave one another clean. The idea was that they’d race faster once the hair was all stripped off. I understood that logic, but what struck me with the most force was the thrill of the ambiguity. One day, you’d glimpse a strong, furry thigh poking out beneath a towel and not know whom it belonged to; then, post-meet, you’d find yourself startled by the gamine smoothness of the boys’ skin, their muscular chests gleaming like polished marble.

I’ve been thinking about the swimmers a lot lately. Down that peeks out from underarms and covers legs seems to be going mainstream. Gender fluidity, and its embrace by the many designers now blurring lines between menswear and womenswear—and swapping clothes between male and female models on their runways—has certainly been a catalyst for the new hirsuteness. In September at the Maison Margiela show in Paris, for example, designer John Galliano made it nearly impossible to tell whether the snake-hipped models wearing his spring collection were boys or girls. You’d see a slim, shaggy calf emerge from a pair of iridescent Mary Janes, and assume boy. And then you’d question that assumption, because millennial women don’t seem all that fussed about body hair.