Nowadays, it’s pretty amazing to see how quickly a positive experiment can go from a curious new trend to an accepted tradition. For instance, it wasn’t so long ago that growing a mustache for Movember required a little explanation, but a sea of hairy upper lips just reminds us that it’s that time of year.
And when that tradition nets donations for a good cause, it seems like everybody wins. So if what we’re talking about today catches on, we’ll have a couple of months where we have a chance to do some good.
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21-year-old Laura Jackson at Exeter University in England came up with an interesting idea.
Last month, she started a campaign called “Januhairy,” where she encouraged women to go a month without shaving their body hair.
As she told the BBC , “I just want women to feel more comfortable in their own beautifully unique bodies.”
But there’s more to her idea than just sitting around and not shaving. She’s hoping that Januhairy will help not only the perception of body hair, but body image in general.
It’s for this reason that she’s hoping the campaign will end up raising at least the equivalent of $1,300 for Body Gossip, a charity that seeks to educate the youth about body image.
The third-year drama student first got the idea after she grew her own hair out for a role.
As she put it, “Though I felt liberated and more confident in myself, some people around me didn’t understand or agree with why I didn’t shave. I realised that there is still so much more for us to do to be able to accept one another fully and truly.”
Before the world caught on, Januhairy picked up steam among Jackson’s Exeter classmates.
Some, like 22-year-old India Howland, were into the idea from the get-go.
As she told the BBC , “I’ve heard girls apologise for having hairy legs before, but you should be able to embody your femininity any way you want to – no one should feel pressured into shaving.”
Others, like 21-year-old Roisin McCay-Hine, were a little nervous about taking part at first.
She said, “I nearly didn’t sign up because I was so nervous about drawing negative attention to myself. But that is exactly the problem, which is why I decided to challenge myself into getting over it.”
But in the month since Jackson announced the campaign, her idea seems to have found a much wider audience.
This woman shared her last shave on New Year’s Eve before taking the plunge, and Jackson said that that she’s received great responses from women in the U.K.,U.S., Canada, Germany, Russia, and Spain.
Who knows? In a couple of years, you might end up hearing the term “Januhairy” as often as “Happy New Year.”
