Downloaded from YTS.BZ
(percussive jazz music)
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ
(bike rattling)
(bike bell rings)
(narrator): I was 13 years old and I was in love...
...with my bike. (bike bell rings)
(♪♪)
(rings)
When I was riding my bike, I felt like I was flying.
I felt like I was free.
It was summertime.
And like most days that summer,
my bike rides ended up at Christina's house.
And on this day, Christina had a plan:
today was the day we were going to shave our legs.
(moans lightly)
We were becoming women
and shaving was required.
(owww)
Somehow Christina always knew what was up next,
and I always followed her lead.
Christina went first.
She was confident... reassuring.
Being a woman isn't so hard.
But then... (squeaking)
Let's just say, things didn't go as planned.
(yells loudly)
(yelling)
(soft rattling)
Before I became a woman,
life was a whole lot simpler.
Even as a kid I was perplexed by the world of adults.
(mother hums)
My mom seemed very different from my dad.
This made no sense to me whatsoever
because us kids -
we were all the same.
(laughter)
My brothers and I liked doing the same things.
(brothers laugh)
They just didn't like doing them with me.
But Terry did.
We'd been best friends for as long as we could remember.
And we loved all the same things.
(croaking)
We even wore the same clothes.
(laughter)
Except when we weren't wearing them.
(splashing)
By the time we were 11, we'd made it to the top.
- Whee!
(narrator): We were the oldest kids in the school
and we were the best.
- Whoo! (narrator): At everything.
- Whoo-ooh!
(narrator): We'd been kids our whole lives, after all,
so we knew what we were doing.
- Yippee!
(narrator): But then suddenly, everything changed.
And in my limited experience, so far in becoming a woman,
nothing good ever came from it.
So why would I shave my legs?
Around this time,
my favourite book was about a gang of outsiders.
I could relate because at my new school,
I was part of a gang too.
But instead of being tough and cool,
we were goofy and mischievous.
And the title of our book, if we'd had one,
would've been The Free Spirits.
We bonded over things like
our desire to swing as high as we could,
and then to jump off at an alarming height.
The curiosity we had about the inner lives of our pets;
these furry family members who we loved fiercely.
Getting away with sneaking onto the local rink after hours
so that we could skate under the stars.
And our love of art.
Art was expansive.
It could be beautiful.
Or disturbing.
It could be abstract.
Or surreal.
But more than anything,
art gave us the freedom to express ourselves.
A freedom that extended to our hairy legs.
(laughter)
I graduated high school never having shaved them.
And not knowing I had gotten away with something.
In fact, I was confident that wherever I went,
I'd find fellow female hairy-legged friends.
So when I got to university,
the first thing I did was look for them.
But pretty soon I started to wonder if I was wrong.
It appeared that the shins of every woman on campus
were shorn -
except for mine.
(teacher, indistinct)
(narrator): And then, I spotted her.
I wasn't alone!
There were at least two of us.
And after a few days of observation,
I found even more.
I deduced that these fellow female hairy-legged students
could be placed into three categories.
The first were the ISTS.
These included feminists, pacifists,
animal rights activists,
environmentalists, communists and anarchists.
Identified through political buttons,
sandals made from recycled car tires,
and The Communist Manifesto.
The second group were the hippies.
Nature lovers, tree huggers,
flower children, folk singers,
and vegetarians.
They cooked with lentils,
were into toe jewellery,
peace on earth,
and transcendental meditation.
- Om...
(narrator): But the hairy-legged women who intrigued me the most
were the rugby players.
They were fierce, powerful,
loyal, and bold.
Easily spotted by their injuries,
their muddy knees,
and of course, their striped jerseys.
The women's rugby team
was known to take anyone who wanted to play.
Including me,
someone who had never played the game before,
didn't really catch onto the rules,
and was scared of the ball.
For a while I got away
with letting others play the game for me.
(crowd cheering)
Until I caught the ball.
(grunts)
(electrical buzzing)
It was a short season.
(soft music)
So, I thought, maybe I was a hippy?
I'd always been a free spirit,
was a huge fan of peace on earth
and I loved folk music.
(soft rattling)
But, unfortunately, the hippies didn't want me.
(clears throat)
I was getting discouraged.
Maybe I should start shaving my legs.
But every time I thought about it,
I'd get this funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.
It just felt... wrong.
Around this time, one of my roommates
was taking a women's studies class.
At first, I couldn't really see the point.
Being women ourselves,
didn't we already know what there was to know?
Eventually though my curiosity got the best of me.
And before I knew it, I became totally engrossed.
But it was this line that blew my mind.
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."
Because this meant
that one is not born to shave the hair on her legs,
one becomes a shaver of the hair on her legs!
The uneasy feeling in my stomach
when I thought of shaving my legs
was the feeling of injustice.
And this is how I became an IST.
A feminist.
And being a feminist made me believe in my hairy legs
more than I ever had before.
Learning about feminism took me on a journey.
(energetic music)
I read books by feminists
who were paving the way for equal rights,
fighting so women could vote,
work, and have control over our bodies.
Including having hairy legs.
I learned that femininity
is just a story written by our culture,
consisting of certain practices, none of which I had to do.
Including shaving my legs.
I learned about patriarchy and capitalism.
And how they work together. (men): Yeah!
(narrator): First by convincing women
their legs should be hairless,
then by selling them a way to get rid of that hair,
and finally, by making this practice a lifelong pursuit,
they could make themselves a lot of money.
The money I'd saved from not shaving my legs
could be put towards something worthwhile,
like saving the whales.
I learned that if the problem was patriarchy,
this meant men.
Which was confusing for my boyfriend at the time.
(growling)
(moaning)
And for me.
(women chanting)
I knew that by marching on my hairy legs,
I was making a difference.
I was helping to make the world a more equal and safe place
for everyone.
My hairy legs had a purpose.
But what I didn't know
was that it was easy to have hairy legs
when I was surrounded by them.
Because eventually I left university, and I wasn't.
One by one, my hairy-legged friends joined the real world.
And, apparently, in the real world,
women shaved their legs.
They had reasons like,
"Shaving my legs makes me feel clean."
"It's customary, it's what women in our culture do."
"I'm a feminist, and feminism is about choice."
"I love the feeling of smooth legs."
"Hairy legs were just a phase, this is the real me."
I didn't judge them.
For all I knew, Simone de Beauvoir shaved her legs too.
(chuckles)
(narrator): I also discovered that in the real world,
people had opinions on hairy legs.
And then someone I never could've predicted
started to think my hairy legs looked disgusting.
Me!
Because if enough people tell you a part of you is disgusting,
you might just start to believe it too.
I couldn't deny that my hairy legs
had gone from making me feel free
to making me feel like a freak.
And it was women who shaved who looked far freer than I felt.
And all I ever wanted was to feel free.
It was time.
I wanted to feel comfortable in my own skin again.
I wanted to feel more like myself.
(soft music)
(sighs)
But as the hair on my leg began to disappear,
I didn't feel more like myself,
I felt less.
Because I was disappearing.
This is what I knew for sure.
My hairy legs made me feel like I did when I was a kid,
before becoming a woman tried to pull me away from myself.
My hairy legs made me feel free-spirited
like the flower children,
powerful like the rugby players
and fierce like the feminists.
My hairy legs made me feel expansive
like when I was a teenager and I discovered art
and it helped me to make sense of it all.
My hairy legs made me feel free.
My hairy legs made me feel.
(breathes loudly)
There will always be a part of me
that falls outside the frame of someone else's idea
of who I should be.
And my hairy legs were the first line of defense
in protecting who I was becoming
and what I believed in.
If shaving my legs was someone else's story,
then not shaving my legs was my own.
And it's in this story I find my freedom.
(splashing)
Subtitling: difuze