I ended up shaving most of my body all the way through high school (and dreamed about electrolysis), until one girl ran a hand up my bare leg and locked eyes with me. (Photo Shanita Sims)Įveryone is self-conscious about something at that age, and I carried it with me for a long time. The writer, now in his adulthood, recounts his childhood growing up with extra body hair. I waited to shower until everyone else had gone to sleep and never dared wear shorts. I started researching hypertrichosis - werewolf syndrome - worried that I’d be covered in fur by adulthood. Some of the teasing had a hint of admiration behind it, but it still made me feel like a freak. She drove me home that night, and the next day my dad brought out the razor for a lesson. When my mom drove up to bring me home for Christmas, a teacher pulled her aside and started whispering about the hair on my upper lip and on my chin (which, to be fair, was starting to look more like an invasive fungus than any benign peach fuzz). In line for the showers, the guys noticed, and that’s where Sasquatch was born. By the time I was 12, the hair on my legs was really thick (like, thicker than my dad’s) They’d already told us in health class - everyone matures at a different pace - but this was like a scene from Teen Wolf, I wasn’t even a teenager yet (funny how in MTV’s reboot of that movie, Tyler Posey is so hairless he’d make a more convincing merman).
It grew on my arms, down my stomach (what I learned was called a happy trail) and down there - way, way down there. By the time I was 12, the hair on my legs was really thick (like, thicker than my dad’s), and the fuzz on my arms was extending down to the backs of my hands, and dusting each knuckle.There were other changes too - my voice started cracking, for one - but nothing as obvious as this. SEE ALSO: Why I’m not afraid to be called feminine Like brothers.īut I forgot brothers can also be bullies. Suddenly, I was excited for a four-year sleepover with kids like me - kids who didn’t really fit in their hometowns, who would become my best friends while we bonded in some kind of combo of The Lost Boys and Harry Potter. Not because I was a fuck-up or a rich kid, but because my public school wasn’t the best and I got a scholarship to someplace better. When I was 11, I left home for an all-boys boarding school.
(Illustration by Justin Teodoro/ Very Good Light) Sometimes, hitting puberty too quickly gets you into hairy situations.
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