Daughter with hairy legs

[cp5kc]

Hi I have a 10 nearly 11 year old daughter who has quite thick dark hair on her legs. Over the last couple of years it has started to bother her more and more. She won't go swimming with anyone except family and is worried about wearing shorts in the summer. I have tried to reassure her that it's totally normal and we all have it but if course what she sees is other women, including me, shaving or removing hair in any way. Many of her friends have hair on their legs as well but none quite as dark and "obvious". Does anyone have any tips to share on supporting her to handle this? What I'd really like to do is find a way to support her to cope with it until she's a bit older and mature enough to decide what she wants to do about it. Would love to hear others experiences. And yes I know I should probably stop shaving my legs etc too but it is a 30 year habit and deeply rooted expectation that I'm trying to break 🤷 I would love it if she could find the confidence to be proud of who she is and how she looks no matter what. But I also know that this is easier said than done for many tweenagers.

I'd let her too. My DD just started shaving her legs when she was 11. There was no discussion, she just took one of my razors and started shaving in the shower. I felt no need to stop her. She obviously felt more comfortable.

OP my child is the exact same age as yours
My child grew conscious a classmate laughed at her legs twice. That's all it took. Really pissed me off. This was almost a year ago.
But now she's so conscious she doesn't want to wear shorts to school. I didn't want that.
I told her it's normal etc etc but I said it's up to you, you can shave your legs if you want. I just don't want you not having bare legs because you feel like this.
Got a lady shaver for her and she's done it. I knew that this was the right time. I just hate for her to avoid having bare legs because of it so I'd rather she shave because of that.
It pisses me off that it happened because of someone laughing at her though

Just let the poor girl shave her legs ffs. She doesn't need to be "mature enough". It's not a permanent decision.

If she hates it and it’s making her feel bad, let her shave her lower legs, ankle to knee. Show her how to do it safely. Then she can enjoy being carefree again and swim with friends.

It's such a weird thing to get het-up about, it's just body hair, does it really matter if she removes it? If you had a son would you insist he didn't shave his face till he was 'old enough'?

It isn’t “just body hair” though is it?

it’s not socially acceptable for women to have body hair, and removing it, or not, sends a statement.

if a woman doesn’t remove body hair, people do get “het up” about it. I don’t shave my legs, but even as an adult woman I am very self conscious about wearing shorts or dresses in public where people might see. It’s a definite statement to go against social norms and I do feel judged for it.

My DD is fair haired but I bought her an electric shaver when she said it bothered her. I really don’t see it as a feminist issue it’s just hair and if you don’t like it you can get rid of it, no big deal.

Same issue with my daughter who has very dark hair and pale skin. If it bothers her help her remove it. We started with one of those electric razor things which was much safer for her to use. But be ready for her wanting to remove top lip hair, arm hair etc. Unfortunately that's the world we live in and peer pressure is strong. I am an expert waxer now. When you see the price of a beautician it was a no brainer!

Genuinely curious as to what your body hair is like. Some of us are super hairy with dark hair on light skin. Not exaggerating when I say that my leg hair was very comparable to a man’s legs. I had to wear shorts for swimming as my public hairs as a normal swimsuit couldn’t contain it. It was a lot and I really struggled with my self esteem even after I started shaving my legs. Young girls do realise when they are different to others.

pars exactly, this was my leg hair after 30yrs of waxing. Luckily I was allowed to remove it from the age of about 9. (I now have a Lumea).

That’s how my hairs looked….but a lot more of it!

Laser worked wonders for me!

FFS this kind of comment is why prepubescent girls get embarrassed by their bodies. She doesn't have legs like an ape, she has legs like a child. It is completely normal and healthy for humans to have body hair. If women stopped repeating these offensive comments we wouldn't need to even have this discussion because our daughters would grow up confident knowing there's more important things in life than what they look like at age 10.

My leg hair looks like this, I still regularly don’t bother to remove it. I did when I was young, but now acknowledge it’s just hair and everyone has body hair.

I don't see the point in making her wait. Just ask her if she wants to get rid of it she's not too young if she's hairy

@ParsonsPont , I think the biggest thing is that I grew up somewhere rural and old fashioned where women didn't spend a lot of time and money on their appearance so e.g. most women didn't dye their hair or wear makeup. And rarely wore skirts. And I'm now a scientist which is not a glamourous profession. So my bandwidth for what is considered normal is probably wider than someone who is younger and grew up and lives in a community where women are more judged for their appearance.

I think it's difficult to say where on the scale of hairiness any of us are because we so rarely see natural hairy legs. If you google it's quite horrifying how many articles there are about how disgusting women's hair is. And some of the comments on here as well, there are lots of pragmatic and sensible comments, but also some really offensive ones and sad stories of people being bullied at school. And yet nobody seems to blame the bullies but instead blames the mothers who don't want to start their young daughters on the journey of feeling they have to modify their appearance to make it 'acceptable'.

Like I said I think the OP has to be pragmatic about what is the route of least harm for her daughter and in this case it probably is shaving her daughters legs so she feels confident to take part in exercise. But wouldn't it be better if women and girls weren't making horrible remarks to each other about their appearance.

I doubt OP is coming back, I don't think she got the responses she was expecting 😬

@JaninaDuszejko
Some girls have very thick dark hair against very pale skin. I did. And the hairs were long. It wasn't nice. I hated it. No one made a comment.

But society is full of perfect images you cannot avoid.
If you force a child to have very hairy legs or even mildly hairy legs showing against their will when they know many women shave as adults, and many shave as children.
What are you achieving?

It's one thing if your hairs are blond on brown skin. Quite another dark ones on pale skin.

Maybe these mothers who insist the child doesn't shave had pale blond hairs. And they didn't grow up with the social media we have now.

@JaninaDuszejko most schools wear skirts.
There's no avoiding it.

Yeah I think people aren't accepting that leg hair is a very different statement on one woman to another.

I'm blonde and I don't have a heap of body hair so I could go out with hairy legs and probably no one would notice unless they looked properly or felt my legs. So it would be all very well for me to boast about how good I am at feminism if I didn't shave them, but it would be hypocritical of me to then expect women with a lot of dark, thick hair to do the same.