A bold and unapologetic photographic chronicle is upending conventional ideals of feminine allure—inviting women to shelve the blade and instead reclaim a forgotten ornament: their natural armpit hair.
Long before razors hummed and wax strips tore through morning rituals, the extraction of body hair was already woven into the fabric of human grooming. This ancient compulsion traces back to our earliest ancestors—when seashells and honed stones served as crude tools for scraping the skin bare.
Echoes of Ancestry
Eras passed, but the drive to defoliate endured—eventually colliding with Victorian science. Charles Darwin’s proposition of natural selection reframed body hair in evolutionary terms, linking its absence to desirability.
Darwin posited that diminished body hair signaled a more “advanced” stage in human evolution—a belief that rebranded smooth skin as not only sexually appealing, but as a marker of superiority. Thus, hairlessness wasn’t just aesthetic—it became aspirational, a supposed symbol of progress coded into social desire.
Being hairless became a sign of progress and desirability.
Feminine duty
By the dawn of the 20th century, the cultural script had been etched in stone—smooth, hairless skin was not merely preferred but prescribed, a silent commandment for femininity. Body hair was recast as a blemish, a biological misstep needing erasure rather than a natural texture to be embraced.
“It’s long been burdened with stigma—still is, in fact—drenched in layers of shame,” noted Heather Widdows, author of Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, in her conversation with CNN. “Today, the majority of women operate under the illusion of obligation—as though shaving isn’t a choice, but a mandate. That speaks to something profoundly unsettling, though tides are, slowly, beginning to shift.”
“Overtly Masculine”
After generations of aesthetic indoctrination, women are now seizing the narrative, dismantling long-standing ideals that tethered femininity to flawlessness—and to bare skin.
“The general perception of armpit hair on women is that it’s repugnant, unsanitary, even monstrous. It’s coded as aggressively masculine,” said London-based photographer Ben Hopper in an interview with Bored Panda.
Intent on unmasking these biases, Hopper uses his lens to reveal women in their most unembellished form. “What intrigued me was the question: Why is female armpit hair still considered a cultural heresy?” he reflected. “I also wanted to peel back the layers of how we’ve been taught to digest beauty—because if you scan the fashion and film worlds, you’ll see an obsession with a rigid, sanitized ideal of what women should look like.”
‘Raw unconventional look’
Exploring how people respond to “females with armpit hair,” Hopper created his daring photo series, “Natural Beauty.”
“The essence of the series lies in the dissonance,” Hopper remarked to the Huffington Post, speaking of the monochrome portrait collection. “It’s a deliberate juxtaposition—the sleek, curated notion of feminine allure colliding with the untamed, often shunned presence of armpit hair.”
He continued, “I anticipate the imagery will catch many off guard—and truthfully, that ripple of surprise is part of what I set out to provoke.”
‘Primal power’
The endeavor, initiated by Hopper in 2007, unfurls an evocative tapestry of candid recollections and spoken fragments from models and actresses at the heart of this evolving movement. These participants unveil their odysseys of emancipation, choosing to bare their unadorned selves with defiant grace and no trace of apology.
“I felt this immense exhale of the soul when I allowed it to grow out,” mused Kyotocat, one of the featured models. “It was like slipping into my own skin again. There was ease in it—almost ancestral. A surge of audacity rose up in me, as though I’d reclaimed something ancient and raw.”
Sophie Rose, another of Hopper’s muses, illuminated the visceral charge of embracing what’s often hidden. “It gave me a sense of sovereignty,” she confessed. “To resist the script handed to us and feel unshaken by it—that’s a quiet form of might. Honestly, watching people recoil in horror was comedic gold.”
Gabriela Eva, who cultivated her body hair solely for the shoot, admitted she was intrigued by how she’d metabolize the reactions. “At first, it left me raw—exposed in a delicate way. But then, something shifted. I felt potent,” she reflected. “Now, my armpit hair is a part of how I experience beauty. Without it, I’d feel oddly vacant.”
A Body, Not a Battleground
Sienna shared a more subdued perspective, noting that letting her armpit hair flourish didn’t necessarily ignite empowerment—rather, it instilled ease. “To me, it was simply comfort,” she said. “We’re so quick to politicize women’s choices, but I’m not keen on my flesh being a billboard for resistance. Just because I diverge from convention doesn’t mean I want my body to be read as a battlefield.”
In her written passage, Swedish actor Emilie Bostdt echoed this sentiment, casting light on the paradox. “It’s bewildering that something as innately human as armpit hair has become symbolic—has been thrust into the arena of ideology,” she observed. “That alone is reason enough to let it grow.”
Questions beauty standards
Despite the message of embracing body hair, Hopper clarified that he doesn’t necessarily “want women to start growing their armpit hair.”
“I merely contend it’s within the realm of plausibility, and it ought not be summarily discarded,” he remarked with quiet fervor. “All I’m asking is for people to interrogate the edifice of aesthetic ideals—tear at the seams of the illusion.”
As an ever-expanding chorus lends weight to the dialogue and movements such as “Natural Beauty” gather formidable resonance, the aperture widens for a more nuanced, capacious reckoning of what constitutes allure.
Is society primed to truly behold unembellished beauty, stripped of pretense and artifice? We’d be keen to hear your contemplations—share this narrative and help stir the slumbering discourse.