What shouldn't be criticized until it's actually experienced?

‘The girl with the mustache.’

The year 2009, standard XI

‘Hey, did you see the new girl? She has a mustache on her face.’ One girl came up to me one and gestured towards a new admission girl who was sitting silently in her seat.

‘Who? Arya? I know her from my coaching class. She’s a nice girl.’ I said.

‘But she has a mustache. Don’t you know boys call her ‘The Man' of the class.’ She giggled.

‘Yeah? Well okay. Do you or any of the boys know she has PCOS? That she gets a period once a year? That she’s going through treatment for the same?’

‘Why can't she also go to a parlor too?’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Not many people cannot afford weekly trips to parlor. She comes from a lower middle-class family and her family can barely afford these necessary things like education and treatment.’

‘Whatever. I am getting late. Will catch up with you later.’ She flipped her mushroom cut in style and walked away. I knew she was going to gossip about me too, however that was my school since KG, so I was in my safe shoes.

But the point that boys and girls don't like girls who have a ‘mustache' captured my teen mind.

Many times, as a girl, I have seen other girls and boys making fun of a girl who has a ‘mustache’, even if they're just small invisible hair on the upper lips. ‘Perfectly shaped eyebrows' are the other thing. Waxed hands, waxed legs, bikni wax, underarms, tummy wax, the list goes on and on.

What is this obsession with a hairless female body in the current generation?

I have seen my mother's wedding photograph which is over forty years old. Her eyebrows were unmade at her wedding, and I am sure she did not get her upper lip threaded too, but she's the most beautiful bride for me. To me, she looks stunning. And not because she's my mother, I once saw the wedding photograph of my aunt, which is 50+ years old, and again, to me, she looked very beautiful.

As a girl, when I was growing up, in my late teens and early twenties, I, just like most girls was very conscious about my body image. When I got into a relationship, for the first two years I always refused to meet my boyfriend if my ‘mustache’ or ‘eyebrows' were even a little visible or if my hands weren't waxed liked a marble floor.

Before every meeting, a visit to the parlor was a must, when finally one day, he realized this fact and scolded me real good.

‘Listen to me Vidushi Gupta, I am going to marry you one day, and eventually, I will come to know how you really look without all that parlor stuff. I am going to know how you look with grown eyebrows and mustache, so stop trying to hide them from me every time we meet. Do you think when I meet you it is your mustache or your eyebrows I look at? No, it is you.’

It took him another fine year to make me believe that he will love me, value me, and will still be with me even if I have slight hair on my upper lips, if my eyebrows aren't in perfect shape, or if my hands and legs does not resemble the shiny smooth marble flooring.

Visit to parlor for maintaining a clean look -Yes.

Visit to parlor because I am ashamed of the natural hair of my body and believe that I need a hairless body to be accepted in society - No.

I still go to a parlor, but the mindset has changed.

I am pretty sure most women and girls of this generation feels the same, where they feel the constant pressure to visit a parlor every fifteen days to get every strand of hair removed from their body (except head), else they won't be called beautiful, or even worse, she wouldn't even be called a girl. Worst, no boy (or girl) will show interest in them romantically.

To boys and girls - Kindly don't criticize the natural concept of body hair of a female body. Having little body hair does not make a girl, ‘The Man'.

The pressure on women to be hairless from top to bottom all the time around the year should be reduced.