by Mara Altman
BEARDED LADY
Mara Altman
It was the turn of the century. I was 19 years old and a student at UCLA, a school bathed in milky young complexions and spicy Mexican food. I joined friends for dinner at a taco joint on Sepulveda Boulevard, where a dark and deeply handsome young waiter named Gustavo took considerable notice of my face. I will never forget that name, Gustavo. We flirted over the horchata and made googly eyes over the guacamole. My friends evaporated into the atmosphere until there were only two of us left in the room. Every time he passed our table, he glanced furtively in my direction, and I returned his interest with the dividend of a smile and the promise of much, much more. It even seemed possible that at some point in the evening’s marathon mating dance, we would speak about more than the Thursday night specials.
Finally, the check — and our moment — arrived. Gustavo placed the bill in front of my friends, and leaned down to my expectant ear. I tingled with excitement about what he might whisper. A phone number... an address... a marriage proposal...
And then they came tumbling from his luscious lips like poop from a piñata, five simple words that have seared themselves forever into my memory.
“I like your blonde mustache,” he said.
***
It is now eleven years later. I’m on the cusp of marriage to a wonderful man who is covered in hair. He not only makes me feel happy; he also makes me feel smooth. I am writing this story for him, because I have something to tell him.
Dave, I have something to tell you.
I am a bearded lady.
No, not like those women you see at the circus. More like those women you see on the street, in magazines, at the corner coffee shop. Yes, Dave, they’re bearded, too. You don’t realize it, though, because we are all (except for a few Cambodians; I’ll get to that later) engaged in an endless process of removing the additional and unwanted hair we inexplicably, annoyingly came with. You see, evolution played a cruel trick on the supposedly fairer sex. It involves chin hair, nipple hair, mustache hair, thigh hair, and — yes — even toe hair. Dave, by God, it’s true — we have fucking toe hair! Just like you! But the difference is that we spend millions, no, make that billions, of dollars to have it waxed, lasered, shaved, and otherwise removed from our bodies, so that when you see us naked, you won’t run screaming into the night.
I’m telling you this now, before we get married, because I am, unfortunately, plagued with two parallel conditions: an inordinate amount of body hair, and a genetic predisposition toward brutal honesty. These would seem to be contradictory forces, particularly since I’ve spent thousands of my own precious dollars in a futile attempt to look as though I’m not a hairy beast. I strapped myself to a wall in Spain and endured the pain of hot wax; I went for monthly laser treatments from a doctor in Bangkok who almost turned my face into a failed lab experiment; I own enough pink disposable razors to impact the quarterly income of Gillette. I’ve scraped, shaved, yanked, tweezed and plucked nearly every visible surface of my body, not to mention certain sections I discuss only with my therapist.
I guess I’m also telling you this because I’m trying to figure out why I care. I know you love me no matter what. I realize no one — even you — will ever see the silky brunette strands that occasionally emerge from my nipple. I acknowledge that I’m not the victim of some cruel hormonal joke; I know that plenty of women have it worse than me. That raven-haired beauty in front of me at Vinyasa Yoga on 19th Street, Thursdays at 4 p.m. sports actual mutton chops. But why, when I look in the mirror, do I see Roddy McDowall in Planet of the Apes? How can I rid myself of an obsession borne by women since the dawn of time? What weapon do I have to combat the societal standard that all women must be smooth, supple, hairless creatures? When will I be permitted to let my hair down? Not my head hair, but my arm pit hair, my facial hair, my leg hair, that little happy trail. And is that even what I want? You love me for who I am, right?
So why do I want to be somebody else?
***
I was in my 8th grade physical education class in suburban San Diego when I learned that there was a really bad kind of body hair to have. And that I had it.
It began with a group of girls, sitting cross-legged on the grass. Our uniforms — maroon drawstring shorts and a grey T-shirt, not that I recall every single solitary detail of that day — revealed our different stages of development. My shirt had ALTMAN written out in black permanent marker just under the peeling, screen-printed figure of our mascot — a crusader. Again, you just kind of remember these things.
While the PE teacher went off to grab soccer balls, we just sat there doing nothing, while the sun beat down on us. To pass the time, I was contentedly grabbing one fistful of grass after another, and then ripping it out. Grass. Out. Grass. Out. Repeat ad what felt like infinitum. Finally one of the girls, April, got up and put her hands on her hips. She looked me up and down, but mostly down. She then took a jump back and flung her arms in the air.
“Ewww, you don’t shave?” April shrieked. “That’s SO gross!”
I let go of the grip of grass I had in my hand. They fell to the ground, like so many hairs.
They looked at my legs. I felt like Sissy Spacek at the end of “Carrie.” The hairs sparkled in the sun like beads of blood. Under that withering Southern California sun, they wouldn’t stop making a spectacle of themselves.
Other girl legs were splayed about me. It was the dawning of a new era as my eyes scanned them, pair after pair: Shaved. Shaved. Shaved. Shaved. Shaved. Shaved. And then, finally, back to my furry gams, announcing themselves so brightly that they were probably inadvertently transmitting SOS signals to airplanes.
I’d known that women shaved, obviously. At least it had been absorbed by my subconscious. But it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I was supposed to join the tradition. I was one of them — a girl — and I had to act accordingly, or be shunned like a leper. My hair apparently represented a possible contagion.
As my fur was inspected by the nearby contingent, a warm rouge attacked the back of my neck and then snuck hotly around to my cheeks. I could pull my legs into my chest and then stretch my shirt over them. I could run away. I could pretend I didn’t hear April and hope that she disappeared. I grabbed another handful of grass and pulled it out, wishing that at that moment each and every one of my leg hairs could be reallocated with such ease.
I was already a little behind. Wait, make that really behind. I was roughly a foot shorter than the average 8th grader and had not yet developed a sense of fashion, unless “fashion” could be described as five different colors of sweat pants. When I was 12, my Mom asked me if I wanted jeans and I declined for practical reasons. “They are too stiff and cold in the morning,” I explained. Going shopping was out of the question. I didn’t fit into anything in the juniors section so I had to go to the kids’ sizes, where all they offered were variations on flower-print shirts and polka-dotted socks with lace.
Another issue was that I’d practiced gymnastics competitively for the past eight years, and as a result what had developed was not my breasts, but my thighs. There was a group of guys who, when they spotted me at recess, would shout, “It’s muscle girl. Flex!” Those were not the bulges I wanted them to notice.
I couldn’t navigate my developmental abyss with conventional tools. So when I got home that day, I dug through The Everything Drawer in the kitchen. It’s the one with the odds and ends like tape, expired Tylenol, three Band-Aids, a granola bar, a couple of tacks and a light bulb. I found the perfect implement: a battery-operated lint remover. I tucked it into my backpack and went to my room to begin my work.
For some reason I didn’t feel like I could ask my Mom or Dad for
razors. I felt guilty even considering the request. I knew if I did so, I would be knocking their entire modus operandi. They saw the world through their late 1960s Berkeley-colored glasses, and maintained a loyalty to All Things Natural — countering societal conventions like hair removal, maybe having something to do with nostalgia for John Lennon’s unkempt eyebrows. Meanwhile, my Mom hadn’t removed hair on any part of her body, ever. And my Dad professed to love it.
“I’ve been very happy with this hairy little creature,” Dad would say.
In addition to his shaving shibboleths, Dad often made the point that he did not like it when women wore makeup or perfumes (yes, that includes deodorant). Basically, we were a hair-positive household that practiced a Don’t-Hide-How-You-Came doctrine. But instead of feeling free to be who I was, sometimes this hairy-go-lucky attitude felt confining. One time I wore a body spray called White Musk. I’d put it on right before I got in the car with my Dad. His face contorted into a spontaneous pukey expression as he rolled down the window.
“Yuck!”
The entire family had apparently met secretly at some point without me, and formed a pact against all forms of body enhancements and alterations. Once I’d put on some lipstick and my older brother asked, “Why are you wearing that stuff?” The question was so laced with condemnation that I felt like he’d found me shooting up heroin. Why are you wearing that stuff? Why are you shooting up heroin? I pointed out to him that he was dating a girl who shaved, wore blush and concealer and lipstick and eye shadow and mascara and also some sort of raspberry scent that I felt certain I’d once whiffed at The Body Shop. He said those weren’t the parts he liked about her. But at 13 I could connect the dots; he was attracted to girls who gussied up. Guys liked girls who gussied up. Still, I couldn’t help feeling ashamed that I’d tried to change my innate lip shade in front of my makeup-mocking family. When he went back to his homework, I looked in the mirror and rubbed off the fakery. I wanted to fit in.
But getting rid of my hair wasn’t exactly about improving my looks. I didn’t quite comprehend what a female leg should look like at that point, anyway — and I wasn’t trying to attract a guy, not yet. At 13, guys remained as untouchable as tropical fish in an aquarium. I admired their firm fins and bright colors as they passed, but we could never blow bubbles together. They didn’t even notice my nose pressed up against the glass.
No, I had to remove hair for basic schoolyard survival, or risk permanent exile to the farthest reaches of the lunch area. I dreaded the idea of being called gross again. During that time of major pubescent shifts, April made it her job to strain out confusion — a self-appointed quality control officer on the San Marcos Junior High School playground, barking at any girl who failed to maintain her proper place on the feminine side of the distinct gender line.
That meant no leg hair, ladies.
For the remaining hours of that school day it had felt like 40 million sniper-eyes were laser-focused on my legs. Even the slightest pupil flicker bound in my direction caught my attention. The embarrassment was vaguely equivalent to having toilet paper hanging from your shoe, but not really. You can’t shake off leg hair. I know; I’ve tried that, too.
So I locked the door to my bedroom and pulled out the lint-remover contraption. I flipped on the switch. It started buzzing. I lowered it to my calf, feeling equal measures of shame for having hair, and for buzzing it off with a machine.
I cringed as it made calf contact, expecting excruciating pain. But it really only tickled, asserting itself as a machine manipulated for the wrong purpose. Hair was not lint. I needed a Plan B.
I couldn’t steal a razor from my Mom, like my other girlfriends could from theirs, because she didn’t have any. Although my father used blue Bic disposables for his cheeks, the commercials made it quite clear that legs needed pink.
After a week of wearing pants, I finally got the gall to ask my Mom about shaving.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
To leave her ranks, I’d be a traitor. She’d be out a hairy compatriot. Me, her only daughter — her own flesh and blood — straying from the path.
But. I. Couldn’t. Not. Do. It.
I nodded.
She bought me a disposable pink razor and some shaving cream, and accompanied me to the master bathroom for the occasion. She handed me the equipment and sat on the toilet seat, expectantly, as I planted my foot on the edge of the bathtub.
“Now what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess you just slide it up your leg.”
“You think that’s all you have to do?”
“Try it,” she said. Clearly, she was clueless.
“Like this?” I said, moving the razor over my shin.
The razor left an empty path in its wake.
Look, ma — no hair! I could now return to the schoolyard and show April my shiny, glamorous new gams.
***
By sophomore year, I was finally getting on track. Much to my pleasure, my pubes had sprouted. I’d look at them in the shower and think, I made those! I remained in hair heaven for two entire anxiety-free years. If I’d have known that they’d be the only two years of relative hair peace I’d ever experience, I would have taken time to appreciate it more, maybe made a documentary. I was riding high, experiencing my first boyfriends. I discovered that boy pubes looked a lot like girl pubes. Did I mention that I had pubes? I had pubes! We all had pubes!
But then, all of a sudden — late in my junior year of high school — an assemblage of keratin and protein had conspired beneath my skin to march out of a large number of tiny holes. And not just holes hidden where no one could see them.
They were on my upper lip!
I’d noticed these little hairs on my upper lip before, but I’d ignored them — they were little blonde wispy nothings. But now they were getting a little darker and a bit longer. If I caught myself in the right light in my bedroom, I could see a vague resemblance to Tom Selleck.
How in the fucking shit ball mother fucking hell did I get a mustache?
Only males had mustaches.
I was not a male.
Or was I?
I remembered that my Mom had this stuff called Jolene, in a small turquoise box with white lettering. When I was younger, I used to watch her work its magic. She would mix some powder with cream. The substance would get fluffy and bubbly — the astringent compound, burning our nostrils. She spread the yogurt-like goop on her upper lip and would wait ten or so minutes before washing it off. Underneath the bleach would be hair so light that it was practically invisible.
At the time, I wasn’t able to see the apparent hypocrisy. If my Mom was so liberal and wanted to stay “all natural,” then why would she lighten her upper-lip hair?
That was a question that I would only be able to ask later.
I took that turquoise box from her cabinet. I decided that news of my mustache would be known only to my closest friends, Shannon and Natasha — one was a blonde Caucasian and the other was Cambodian, both of whom grew very fine and small amounts of hair (and the latter of which is so hairless that waxers, over the years, have often felt guilty charging her full price for any one service). Looking back, it might have been helpful to have an Italian girlfriend or two.
Shannon and Natasha bleached with me. With the white goop swabbed thickly on our upper lip, we looked like we were staring in a road production of “Got Milk?” We turned it into a ritual. While the bleach did its work — tingling and then slowly building up to a stinging sensation — we turned off all the lights so that my bug-shaped glow-in-the-dark stickers would burn green and sat in a circle, singing aloud to The Cranberries.
Zombie, Zombie, Zombie,
Hey hey hey…
After I washed off the mixture, I felt relieved. That hair, as far as I was concerned, became invisible. I just had to keep up the ritual every two to three weeks.
I was all set.
Until I met Gustavo.
***<
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How many people had noticed my “blonde mustache” and didn’t tell me? I tried to recall different boyfriends and situations. I’d kissed plenty of boys by then. Had they gotten mustache burn from my face? Is that why Sam didn’t ask me on that second date? Or Jonathan? Or Bill? Is that why that cashier at Vons, the grocery store, was looking at me strangely when I bought razors for my legs? How did I not realize that with my olive skin tone, bleaching my hairs until they were practically white might create a situation on my face?
Gustavo was the first man to ever mention my body hair, but I had collected enough data to make me pretty sure that men were, as a gender, opposed to it. One night I was listening to Adam Corolla and Dr. Drew talking to this complete jerk on Love Line, the radio show. The caller was complaining about his girlfriend’s nipple hairs. He said he found it nasty and couldn’t get turned on when he saw the little strands. He was thinking of breaking up with her. I was shocked to learn that women got nipple hairs — and thrilled to check and discover that I’d been mercifully spared that fate — but three years later, as I stood in horror after spotting my very own first nipple hair, I knew I faced certain rejection from any man who encountered this new deformity.
I was beginning to understand that there was a very small window of what was “acceptable” and I had ventured beyond it. It wasn’t long after the Gustavo Fiasco that I noticed, while staring down at my bikini area, that my pubic hair had been marching, steadily and without heed, down my legs as if it could practice homesteader rights on the rest of my body.
***
I was now 19 years old, and it was time for my first visit to a bikini waxer, who I came to think of as an aggressive border control agent, getting rid of undocumented pubic immigrants. When she entered with the wax strips, I smiled awkwardly and asked the question that I’d be asking for the rest of my life in any and every hair-removal situation.
