Woman Snaps After Being Told She’s ‘Brave’ for Not Shaving Her Underarms. Then She Explains the Painful Reason

A woman is defending her reaction to repeated comments about her body hair.

In a post on Reddit’s AITA forum, the woman recalled a recent incident in which a stranger just wouldn’t stop commenting on her body hair. The Reddit user, who has polycystic ovary syndrome, tends to grow “more hair than ‘average,'” she added, and thus the comments felt hurtful.

The Reddit user was at an outdoor movie screening with her friend, and given the high summer temperatures, the woman wore a tank top. She only realized she hadn’t shaved her underarms in a while when a woman nearby commented on it, saying she loved that she was “embracing [her] feminine hair,” the post read.

Body hair growth has been a longstanding insecurity for the woman, she wrote. Her polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) causes lots of growth and regrowth of her body hair, and while she sometimes shaves it, she also deals with sensitive skin and just leaves it alone sometimes, too.

As the movie went on, the woman who initially commented on her body hair kept getting “progressively drunker” and continued making comments — saying that she “loved” how the woman didn’t shave and that she’s “brave” for that decision.

“I just snapped. I told her to stop, that I wasn’t being brave, I had a personal medical condition I’m still insecure about and to stop commenting about how my body is different,” the woman wrote. “She got silent, mumbled a sorry and walked off with her friend.”

As they were leaving, the Reddit user noticed the woman looked like she had been crying. The user’s friend said she was too harsh on a drunken compliment — though Reddit user countered that it never felt complimentary and only felt like othering.

“Obviously this drunk woman didn’t know about my issues with body hair but it made me so uncomfortable repeatedly bringing it up,” she wrote.

Other users flocked to the comments to defend the user, arguing that even if the woman’s intentions were pure, the repetition was intense and unwarranted, especially for someone who feels insecure about her body hair.

Another commenter added that “don’t comment on people’s bodies” is a solid blanket rule to avoid any awkward or rude situations.

“Commenting on underarm hair is weirdly personal even if you only do it once,” another user wrote. “That’s one step away from walking up to a stranger on the beach and clapping every time they flash their fuzzy bikini line.”

Source: People