Influencer Nika Irani
“My biggest insecurity is my leg hair”
© instagram.com/playgirlnikaa
On Instagram, erotic model Nika Irani campaigns against the sexualization of the female body and for feminist education. This also includes the normalization of female body hair, which Nika sometimes has problems with.
Nika Irani’s Instagram profile is different. The young influencer usually has hardly anything on. The only thing covered is what Instagram doesn’t want to see: nipples – from women. Nika shows what many others don’t want to see: female body hair – in the genital area, on the armpits, on the legs. All the hair that nobody bothers about as long as it’s on men’s bodies. Women, on the other hand, have only recently dared to grow again. There are few who have the courage or love for themselves or the combination of both. And those who do still stand out. Many find all hair “gross” that they don’t wear on their heads. The reason for this is probably clear to all of us by now: we were raised that way, socialized that way. Women’s bodies are meant to be smooth and flawless, like the cover art of the TV movies we grew up with in the ’90s.
departure
Breaking that up, getting back to a new, old normal, that’s what we’re working on now. First and foremost: Nika, who shows herself as she is without shaving anything. In her very honest post on Instagram, she explains that it’s not always easy for her either. “My biggest insecurity when it comes to body hair was and still is my leg hair.”
“I only changed in the toilet.”
As long as we are children, no one cares about any hair, she writes. Later, on the other hand, things looked different: “I remember very well how I changed schools in the 6th grade and was laughed at in the girls’ changing room, from that day on I only changed in the toilet.” The fact that she is different was not only evident from the accent of the Iranian, but also from her body hair. It didn’t help that other girls (with Indian and Afghan roots) were also affected by teasing. “We couldn’t support each other, we were in the minority, we preferred to hide. At the time, the hate was too strong to fight back.”
Nika remembers the bullying because of her hair well. “You look like Mustafa”, “How can a girl be so hairy, it’s so disgusting”, “I bet you have fleas in your hair” – sentences that still resonate today, “as if there was something wrong with me. Like I’m really gross.”
Relief when her mom finally allowed the pink plastic razor. But that not only began a fight against windmills that everyone knows, because hair grows back, but also the journey away from herself for Nika.
In some way we all want to please, conform to the norm, be beautiful. What has been learned from this? What do we do for ourselves? Where does a beauty ideal begin and where does it end? For women it is still part of being hairless. Of course we could all let it grow, but does that make us feel good? Almost every woman knows the feeling that Nika describes:
“As soon as I had even the slightest bit of stubble, I immediately felt male. Wrong. Disgusting.(…) And that feeling continues to this day. I shaved for nine years. Cut. Hurt. Ashamed. Cried. Hidden. I’ve been fighting this for two years and it’s still difficult.”
It should be our freedom to decide for ourselves how we want to look, how we want to feel good. But the way there is just beginning to be walked. Until we are really free in our minds and bodies, we need a lot more role models who don’t look like the women in the TV feature film. Only when normal women, with normal bodies, wrinkles, dents and hair are the ideal, only then will we really have choices without that underlying sense of shame.