If you've never given much thought to your arm hair, it may be hard to imagine what it's like to be unhappy with your own day in and day out, but that's precisely the self-consciousness experienced by countless women moving from childhood into adolescence. One such person is Nicole, who recalls, "My arm hair was pointed out to me ever since I can remember. The average human body boasts some 5 million hair follicles , and generations of beauty standards across many cultures have dictated that on femme-presenting bodies, some of this hair is acceptable and some of it is not. Body hair has been censured and policed, giving rise to hair-removal rituals requiring immense time and resources: shaving, waxing, laser hair removal, electrolysis, and more. As the body-positivity movement has gathered momentum in recent years, though, body hair , especially on legs and armpits, has begun to enter the mainstream, with celebrities and Instagram influencers applauded for flaunting theirs.

Shaving is the pits, which is why these badass female celebs ditched their razors and opted to go au naturel. She was 31 years old and the biggest movie star in the world, so showing off her au natural armpit hair proved to be quite a seminal hygiene moment. Madonna has lived for shocking fans with her antics through during her four-decade career. That includes flaunting her natural underarm hair. The Queen of Pop has flashed her unshaved look in numerous Instagram photos over the years, and now her daughter Lourdes Leon is following in her footsteps.

Hi there! Sign in Create an account Buy images Sell images. Contact us sales alamy. Share Alamy images with your team and customers. Current lightbox.

Michelle Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. While the album did contain a song with a racial slur in the title, what was most immediately confronting was that the pose Smith adopted on the cover unselfconsciously displayed a thatch of underarm hair. Some 36 years later and a selfie posted by Madonna on Instagram, in which she adopts a similar pose to reveal a more stage-managed growth of hair, has prompted a profusion of media articles and tens of thousands of comments, many of which express repulsion. Madonna used the hashtags artforfreedom, rebelheart and revolutionoflove, which indicate that she was presenting the photo, in which she wears a significant amount of make-up and a bra, as subversive. And is the response solely about beauty expectations relating to body hair?