It wasn't until I plopped down on a chair at the café and looked down that I realized I hadn't shaved in a while. At first, I was hyper-aware of it. I'm half Italian, so my body hair is dark and hard to miss. I crossed my legs, read my book, and finished my wine. As I stood up to leave, two guys sitting next to me eyeballed my legs. "Au revoir, madame," one said. Neither of them seemed grossed out. Actually, I was a little grossed out.
As I walked away, I realized they hadn't been inspecting my leg hair. They were just staring at my legs. Still gross, to be sure, but there's a difference.
We had a sunny streak for a few days. I wore shorts the entire time, and not once did anyone do a double take or have any sort of negative reaction to my not-perfectly-clean-shaven legs. It seems par for the course here. While the French get a bad rap when it comes to personal hygiene, I've found that it's not about hygiene so much as the attitude toward it, which is, generally, "Do whatever." You want to shave? Go ahead, shave. You don't want to shave? Cool. Who cares? For me, it's partly logistical. A) I have a travel-size razor that's so small shaving my legs takes forever, B) showers in Paris are the size of a standard refrigerator, and C) my boyfriend is an ocean away. And, also, I don't care. No one else seems to.
"I think it's just nature," said Naomi, a friend of a friend. She was born and raised here. "In France, people care about being natural—but of course, it depends on the person." This tended to be the general opinion among the women I asked. So I thought, "Meh—when in Paris!" and decided to go on a shaving holiday, lathering up nothing but my underarms (I have a line, and I draw it there). Maybe every other week or so, I did a quick, cursory shave down the fronts of my shins, but otherwise, NBD.
