This Is What Happens When You Stop Shaving Your Legs

Shaving your legs is such a chore. It adds quite a bit of time to the daily shower routine, and is something many women gladly slack off on, or even skip altogether, once the weather turns colder. In fact, it's kind of a perk of being single in the winter, knowing that you've got a good few months where nobody is going to be seeing any part of your bare legs so you can get as hairy as you want.

What happens, though, when spring rolls around and you still don't feel like picking up a razor? While quitting shaving altogether is something many of us never quite dare to do, there are women who've ditched the razor for good and gone on the journey from discomfort to acceptance of their legs — and their whole bodies — in all of their naturally hairy glory.

Britni de la Cretaz, writing for Marie Claire, said that what she feared most when she stopped shaving was "other people judging me or finding me gross," but that in actuality, when she walked out of the house in a short skirt and hairy legs, "nobody said a thing." Ella Mendoza, who chronicled her non-shaving for The Body is Not an Apology, had quite a different experience, with both friends and family expressing their discomfort and disapproval. The ones who did not seem to mind her newly hairy legs, however, were her partners, since she revealed that the spontaneity resulting from no longer having to worry about how freshly shaven she was greatly improved her sex life.

For de la Cretaz, the choice to stop shaving was ultimately about rejecting the patriarchal view of how women should appear, and she found strength in choosing to reclaim her own body even if it violated others' standards of what constitutes beauty.

While Mendoza also reveled in the self-confidence she gained from learning to love her body as is, she also described a number of more down-to-earth benefits. For one thing, without having to shave her legs, preparing to leave the house became much quicker and easier. For another, her legs felt much better without the nicks, cuts, rashes, and dried-out skin that shaving often caused.

While both women admitted that giving up the razor wasn't always the easiest decision, they ultimately found that the freedom to say no to the demands of depilation was a decision they did not regret. Plus, think of all the money you'll save on razors — the pink tax is real, after all.