More Indonesian women embrace body hair’s beauty – Tue, June 22 2021

If you’re a woman from Indonesia or anywhere else, you’ve certainly come across more than a few advertisements promoting ways to eliminate body hair – a way to become “beautiful” in the eyes of others. One recent ad featuring an actress showing off her immaculately smooth armpit promotes a technology that is said to permanently eliminate body hair. Waxing and shaving services are more ubiquitous than ever, and many other hair removal brands with taglines that promote “beautiful skin” absent of hair, make the message abundantly clear; women must be smooth as silk to be considered beautiful. 

But some Indonesian women are not having it. They’ve opted to let their hair grow as nature intended. 

Dhianita Kusuma Pertiwi, a writer based in Jakarta, says her value as a woman has nothing to do with whether or not she is hairless.