The rise of hairy young women: ‘I know people who dye their armpit hair, so it stands out more’

“Hell yeah!” is 27-year-old PhD student Anna Busuttil’s response. “I think it’s awesome; cool and rebellious,” she says – a view that chimes with that of most of the women I speak to outside University College London’s Bloomsbury campus. Busuttil says she sees a lot more women nowadays choosing not to remove their body hair. “I know people who dye their armpit hair a certain colour as well, so it stands out even more. I feel like leg hair is more taboo for women; it feels like such a ‘masculine’ thing, and legs are supposed to be a really sexy part of a woman.”

Francesca Hall, 25, agrees: she removes her leg hair, but doesn’t worry about her underarms. Yet she feels that, if anything, it’s becoming less common to go unshaven. “There’s been a general shift, culturally, towards more conservative ideas,” says the student union-worker. “It’s the same with veganism; it’s gone backwards a bit. My friendship group is quite queer, leftwing, and not everyone would remove their leg hair.” But, she says, not removing leg hair is more common “in those circles … I definitely think there’s a correlation there.”

“I’ve got really hairy legs!” says student Phoebe Green, 21, hitching up her long shorts so I can get a better look. “I don’t really pay attention to the trends that are going around; having leg hair doesn’t affect my life in any way,” she says. “I’ve definitely had a few comments, a few condescending dudes being like, ‘why aren’t they shaved?’ But I get a lot of compliments from girls, there’s a lot of solidarity.”