I Don't Know Why #1

"I still shave my legs and I don’t know why." The first installment of a new occasional Oldster Magazine column by bestselling novelist Laura Lippman.

Svetlana Larshina/Getty Images

Oh, I know why I’m shaving them today: I plan to get a pedicure and it seems rude to place my hairy calves into the hands of an underpaid nail technician. It’s bad enough that these women (sometimes men) have to cope with my feet, which show the wear and tear of walking an average of five miles a day. Below the ankles, I’m basically a goblin.

From ankle to thigh-top, my legs are, well, kinda great. Wait, no — that makes sense only if I buy into narrow, should-be-outdated ideas about what women’s bodies must look like. Besides, I’m 65, I’m expected to dutifully narrate all my body’s flaws — the pale silver scar on my left knee, the tiny starbursts of veins here and there, the places that wobble — and, sure enough, I just did. Yay, me, I have performed self-deprecating womanhood, do you like me now? 

My daughter is 13. When she came to me to ask about shaving, I wanted to make sure that she knew she had a choice; she was not obligated to remove hair from any part of her body. I researched the old wives’ tale that hair comes in thicker post-shaving; Gillette was quick to disabuse me of this notion in a series of debunked myths most of which seemed quite self-serving for a company that manufactures razors and shaving lotions. (Fresh blades are better! You need shaving cream!) Still, the Mayo Clinic backed up Gillette: Hair does not grow back thicker/darker/coarser because of shaving. 

So what do I tell my daughter? 

When I was my daughter’s age, the primary concern over shaving was all the nicks and cuts an inexperienced new shaver might suffer. To solve that problem, Gillette introduced what was billed as the first disposable razor for women, the “Flicker,” in 1971. A cream-colored piece of plastic with a round pink dial reminiscent of a seashell’s logarithmic spiral, the Flicker housed five blades; you got a fresh one by turning the dial, safeguarding young fingers from contact with the (not very sharp) razors. When I was 13, I started with a Flicker. I have the sharpest (!) memory of sitting next to my mother on the beige sofa in our living room, watching her run my Flicker across part of her shin. “It works even when your skin is dry,” she told me. “You can’t hurt yourself with this.”

Where was the larger conversation about why I was shaving my legs at all? What about the things, people, who could hurt me? It’s not that I would have expected my mother, born in 1931, to be progressive about grooming. But wasn’t shaving just an objectively weird thing to do?

And yet here I am, still shaving 50+ years later. It’s funny how vanity — is it vanity? — ebbs and flows. I once wouldn’t have been caught dead in my glasses outside the house; now I consider contact lenses way too much trouble. Until a few years ago, I washed my hair every day so I could overcome the particular horrors of perimenopausal bedhead. Now the only thing I try to do every day is take my Lipitor and hormones. Yet I get my eyebrows tinted every 3-4 weeks, pay hilarious sums of money for a uniform hair color, and adhere to a rigorous workout schedule that adds long lines of definition to my calves and thighs. My body, my choice, but are these “my” choices? 

My daughter is 13. When she came to me to ask about shaving, I wanted to make sure that she knew she had a choice; she was not obligated to remove hair from any part of her body.

Talking to my daughter about shaving seemed like pretty small beer in a world where there are people determined to strip her of far more vital choices. We have come full circle. When I first contemplated shaving my legs, in 1972, a woman’s right to abortion was still a year away from being recognized by the Supreme Court. 

My daughter and I sat on the bathtub’s edge, looking at the razor I had selected for her because it was hawked by two female podcasters I admire. (I also like the brand’s wax strips, which I used when the pandemic made it impossible to go have that done.) (Nope, I still don’t know why I, recently separated at the time, prioritized bikini waxes during a pandemic.) This razor is definitely better than the Flicker, which provided a lousy shave, yet is available on the Internet at price points from $29.99 to $99.99. I find this absolutely mystifying. Who wants to go back to 1971? 

1973, on the other hand . . . 

But, as it happens, 1973 was also the year that men started trying to lure me into their cars as I walked home from the school bus stop. I blamed myself for being tall, which must have made me seem more mature. Not that long ago, my not-tall daughter and I got separated in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon, and in that agonizingly long 10 minutes, a man tried to get her into his car. 

I can buy my daughter a better razor than I had at 13. I can provide her support for whatever choices she makes, from shaving/not shaving to buying fast fashion to choosing her pronouns. I can tell her about the men in cars. 

What I can’t figure out is how to give her a better world. 

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Check out the whole series. Previously Laura Lippman published an essay called Whole 60 on Oldster, and took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire. She publishes the newsletter Shaved Meats, Piled High.