A new collaboration between Adidas and Stella McCartney proves that women look stylish even if they don’t shave their body hair.
This week, the sportswear brand posted photos of its SS21 campaign starring professional pole dancer Leila Davis modeling a sports bra and high-waisted leggings, her armpit hair on full display. “Yes to everything, the model, the outfit, the message,” someone wrote on the brand’s Instagram page. Others added, “Thank you Adidas, for supporting women in having the choice to do with their bodies as they please,” “Men can have body hair, so why is it not yet fully accepted in society for women? A beautiful post” and “Normalize body hair.”
Other people weren’t so flattering: “So cute. Not sure about the hairy pits tho,” “Hell no!!!!” “Ok but really…why the hairy armpits” and vomit emojis cluttered the photo.
“People who don’t like body hair, is everything okay at home?” one user wrote.
Davis herself tweeted: “It is so misogynistic to attack women for having body hair. They wouldn’t do it to a man, and the level of steam they have for me is definitely because of my Blackness. It makes them mad that this big brand gave me and my armpit hair a platform.”
The pole instructor in London and founder of the group Blackstage Pole which showcases dancers of color in the UK “as they are often underrepresented, ignored and discriminated against in the pole scene,” tells Yahoo Life that she doesn’t typically shave unless she feels like it. “I remember on my first day of shooting thinking, ‘Well this is me in my natural state and that’s okay.'”
Davis adds, “The majority of my friends have body hair [and] I’m not friends with any body hair shamers so it’s not something I think about often. It grows where it grows. Shaving is an intervention, based on misogyny. [Allowing] your natural body to exist is so normal.” Davis says racism “explains a lot of the hatred and entitlement society feels towards women and femmes with body hair, and the contempt it has for non-white women with body hair in particular.”
