Her Body Hair Was a Crime Against the Internet

"Shave already, you cunt" was apparently one of the more grammatically coherent responses Morgan Mikenas received when she posted photos documenting a year of not shaving her legs or armpits. There were vomit emojis. There were men explaining, at length, that no one would ever fuck her. There were women—somehow worse—expressing genuine disgust, women who had absorbed the standard so completely that body hair on another woman registered as a personal affront requiring a public response.

Mikenas (@i_am_morgie on Instagram) ran the experiment publicly and with a clear purpose: twelve months of body hair, documented, as a deliberate argument against the assumption that a woman’s natural state is a defect to be corrected. She talked about the pressure that begins when girls are eleven or twelve—shave this, smooth that, otherwise you’re disgusting—a norm so deeply installed that most people never pause to ask whether they chose it or simply absorbed it.

The sexual politics of the reaction are pretty transparent. Body hair on women functions as a compliance marker. Smooth skin signals availability, effort, adherence to a standard. Unshaved legs signal something that makes certain men feel personally rejected—as if a woman’s grooming choices are a verdict on them specifically—and makes certain other women feel implicated, like someone is refusing to participate in a shared performance they’ve all paid into.

The harassment was predictable, and the fact that it was predictable is the point. None of it was about her. It was about what she represented to people who had never once considered questioning the rule. We live in a genuinely depressing world when a woman growing out her leg hair for a year becomes an act of defiance that requires an army of online support to survive intact. But here we are.