The Armpit Diaries

When I first stopped shaving my armpits, I kept a diary. I didn't write in it for very long because, happily, I got braver and starting writing about it here and on facebook. In fact, last night I started a club on fb called "I <3 Grrrls With Hairy Pits" and it was thriving within two hours! So, anyway, here are The Armpit Diaries.

 

Day 1

I'd been toying with the idea of not shaving my armpits for at least six days. I first remember the idea when I noticed my spinning instructor last Tues. shaved her armpits. I noticed that she shaved them. I want to regain some of the "stick-it-to-the-man"--ness I had when I was younger. Maybe it is all just a midlife crisis. But at least stopping shaving my armpits is a unique way of dealing with my midlife crisis, right? Anyway, since I'd already been thinking about it, reading Clementine Cannibal's words made me realize I had to take action and stop being afraid of what people think in at least this area of my life. Tommy (my husband) doesn't care. (Note: as of posting this, he loves my fuzz!)

 

Day 3

I think hairy armpits look more natural and therefore better than shaved ones. For some reason exposed armpit hair on guys really bothers me though. Maybe it's because their flaunting their male privilege whereas a woman flaunting hairy pits is being subversive.

 

WHAT HAIRY ARMPITS MEAN

standing up for what I believe in. Standing up for what's right. Doing what I have to do. Putting myself first. Not thinking in "binary code" (ie, if I shave my armpits but still pluck my eyebrows and shave my legs, I can be free to be contradictory in other things.) Standing up for myself. Taking care of myself. Eating right. Exercising. Not worrying about what other people think of me. Not worry about whether something I want to do or how I accomplish something "makes sense." Rejecting that because I am a married woman in my thirties, that means I have to act or be a certain way. Not defining "sex" as vaginal intercourse. Rejecting the idea that if I teach myself to do something a certain way and it's different than how other people do it, I'm "doing it wrong." embracing the dark cunt. embracing the dark faerie fissure in the woods. embracing the dark swarthy sweaty hairy armpit. embracing that life is messy. embracing that people die for no reason and there's nothing you can do to stop it and pictures fall down off from the shelf for no reason and the glass shatters everywhere and this can happen twice in one week but through all that not getting lost in the tangled woods and keeping track of the light, even if it is from a waning moon

That Girl With the Hairy Armpits

I had a tumblr account for about an hour, but I found it too confusing. And kind of pointless since I have this blog, and I only joined so I could be in their Hairy Armpit Club, but something popped up that said I needed to resend my email address to send them my "pits" OR ask them a question, and when I tried to resend my email address, something popped up that said I couldn't do it. So, here is my one post as hairypitgrrrl:

My earliest human memory is when I was about two years old. It was summertime. Tomatoes growing in the back yard, and I was in the back yard, staring at the setting sun, which glowed big and red like a juicy tomato. I spun around, my arms flailing. I felt so free and happy, but safe because my mother was watching me from a million miles of unmown grass and dandelion leaves away, in her denim dress on the back porch.

The Other Hairy Armpit Picture

 First off: any hate comments will be deleted.  However, you may be wondering, what's up with the hairy pits?


The official title of this photograph is "Blue Bra."

Shaft of Light

Life is mostly a dark journey, or that's been my experience, so we should be grateful for the few slim shafts of light that come our way and only dare to hope the gasps of light will bless us more and more like a door opening wider and wider, and more often.

Mom's Sun Mix

The thing my mom and I hate most about winter is how dark it always is. So this year for Christmas, I made her a Sun Mix! Not all the songs are about the sun, "Here Comes The Sun" by the Beatles isn't on here because at the time I made the mix tape (I had to make her a tape because she still has a tape deck in her car) I didn't have that song on CD and my stereo doesn't have two tape players so I can't record from tape to tape. The last three songs are on the tape but wouldn't fit on the CD version of the mix. So, here is my mom's Sun Mix!

Time After Time-- Cyndi Lauper (my mom will be there for me, time after time)
Talk About the Passion-- REM
Little Fluffy Clouds-- The Orb (my brother and I played this song a lot for my mom in the '90's)
Somewhere Over the Rainbow-- Judy Garland (I was obsessed with the Wizard of Oz as a little kid and would go around pretending to be Judy Garland acting out the movie in public places, like my great aunt's apartment lobby, for whoever would watch and I had this song memorized. It was hilarious. I would be Dorothy, and I would make my little brother, who is 2 1/2 years younger than me, play all the other parts, including Toto.)
Possession-- Sarah McLachlan
In God's Country-- U2
Winter-- Tori Amos (both of my parents really like this song, and my mom remembers it from when we were unpacking my first dorm room)
Pink Light-- Laura Veirs ("with the fading of the constellations I am growing strong")
That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)-- Johnny Cash

~~I just realized I really should've put "Ray of Light" by Madonna on this mix! We listened to that album a lot when we were unpacking my first dorm room, too... it had just come out and it was all I ever listened to. Oh, well. Next year.~~

Pink Moon-- Nick Drake (since I was putting all these songs about the sun on the mix, I thought I should throw in a couple about the moon, too)
Who Loves the Sun-- The Velvet Underground
It's Not the Spotlight-- Beth Orton (whenever this song comes on during "Stir of Echoes," I tear up)
Hard Sun-- Eddie Vedder
Sun is King-- Laura Veirs
Man Called Sun-- The Verve
Bette Davis Eyes-- Kim Carnes (I have been known to start the morning chain-smoking and listening to this song on repeat)
Primitive-- Annie Lennox
Map of the World-- Monsters of Folk
I Wish I Was the Moon-- Neko Case
Snow Angel-- Tori Amos (If I make a mix for someone, it's generally gonna have a lot of Tori.)

BONUS TRACKS FOR TAPE VERSION
Good Day Sunshine-- The Beatles
Summertime-- Janis Joplin (because summertime is the bestest time!)
White Rabbit-- Jefferson Airplane (My mom is one of the only babyboomers I know who has never tried drugs. But she still likes this song.)

High School Mix-- DELUXE VERSION

song from the summer before high school (the summer of 1993)

These are Days-- 10,000 Maniacs  

I didn't even like this song when I was first exposed to it... it was my 8th grade graduation theme song, and I never even owned it until just recently when I bought it on iTunes. For awhile, when I'd hear this song on the radio in public places or wherever, this song made me feel wistful and nostalgic, but now, almost 20 years later, listening to this song makes me think of all the things in my life now that I am "blessed and lucky" to have, and makes me focus on the positive and soothes me.

songs from my freshman year of high school-- fall semester, 1993
Plush-- Stone Temple Pilots
Low-- Cracker
Summertime Rolls-- Jane's Addiction (a guy who had a crush on me put this on a mix tape for me)

spring semester, 1994
Shine-- Collective Soul
Yellow Ledbetter-- Pearl Jam

A lot happened my freshman year of high school, and by spring semester I was changing into a different person than I had been in the fall. I guess I was growing up. Anyway, that's why there's the split. My freshman year was hands down my best year of high school.

sophomore year-- 1994-1995
West End Girls-- Pet Shop Boys
Don't You (Forget About Me)-- Simple Minds

That was the year I was the Photographic Editor of Performing Arts or something like that on the school yearbook and someone made an '80's mix that we were always playing. We were also always playing the soundtrack to Dazed and Confused, but none of those songs made it on here, mostly because I just didn't care for them. But more about the songs NOT on this mix later.

Black Hole Sun-- Soundgarden

Looking back on it, this song should've gone before the other two and represented the summer of 1994, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. That was a really bad summer, and I was never the same afterward. That's all I'm gonna say about it.

second half of junior year-- 1996
These songs are all post-breakup with my first real, long-term (for high school) boyfriend.

Wish You Were Here-- Pink Floyd (of course)
Comfortably Numb-- Pink Floyd
Our Lips Are Sealed-- The Go-Go's (I remember driving around with my girlfriends one night with this song on repeat)
Time After Time-- Cyndi Lauper

summer before my senior year-- 1996
Dancing Queen-- ABBA (I was "young and sweet, only seventeen")

"Comfortably Numb," "Time After Time," and "Dancing Queen" were all songs my best friend at the time put on mix tapes for me. The summer of 1996, she went off to be a camp counselor and when she came back I had ditched her for a girl who feigned shallowness and who was friends with most of the boys I had crushes on. I still can't believe I did that! But, that's high school.

senior year
Little Fluffy Clouds-- The Orb

Senior year was my worst year of high school. My big high school was exciting my freshman year, especially since I was coming out of a small Catholic grade school where we had to wear uniforms, but each successive year of high school got worse than the last one as I started to feel more and more like some anonymous cog in the machine I more and more felt my high school to be. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I desperately wanted a boyfriend or at least a best friend I was joined at the hip with, you know, a BFF. But I had never felt so alone. Looking back, it's a good thing I got used to it then...

summer after high school-- 1997

Opium For the People-- Gong
Poison Door-- Sisters of Mercy (put on a mix tape for me by my then BFF)


I was feeling better. I was going off to the Rhode Island School of Design, I had gotten myself a BFF, and things seemed better. My life had enough drama in it to match the drama in my head. At the time, that seemed like a good thing.



Okay, so here's the deal with the music that's NOT on here, like Hole, Tori Amos, REM, the Beatles, the Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth and Nirvana. A lot of the music on this playlist was put on mix tapes for me... the music I adored I went out and bought on CD. Then iTunes came along, and with that I bought some of the treasured music on the mix tapes that I'd lost or that had broken or that I wanted to have on CD, or that, like in the Stone Temple Pilots Case, I gave away the CD because I may have liked it at 14 but at the ripe old age of 15 I thought I'd outgrown it.

R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts (Video)

I said in my last post, which features the video for "Crucify" by Tori Amos, that "Automatic For the People" and "Little Earthquakes" are my go-to albums when I'm feeling bummed. So here's the video for "Everybody Hurts." Enjoy.

Tori Amos - Crucify [Music Video]

This song is from my all-time favorite album,"Little Earthquakes," and it's also my go-to album when I'm bummed out (well, that and "Automatic For the People" by REM.) I love this song at the beginning of the album because I'm always "crucifying myself" and it reminds me, like Tori Sings, that I'm "just and empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird."

Tori Amos - Spark

John Lennon Makes A Cappuccino

The Dresden Dolls 'Girl Anachronism' music video

speaking of Self-love...

When I was 15 years old and going through adolescent hell, Courtney Love and her then most recent album, "Live Through This," were my shining stars and helped me, well, live through it. They still do. But now I've been going through midlife crisis hell... it seems, happily, to be reaching its end. At the height of my midlife crisis, I pined for the '90s. I got into things from the '90s that I didn't give a toss about in the actual '90s; like Pearl Jam... although I do like a lot of their music, and I love Eddie Vedder's solo stuff. Anyway.

Live Through This: "When you're going through Hell, keep going" --Winston Churchill

"If you live through this with me, I swear that I will die for you" --Hole, from "Asking For It" off of "Live Through This"

So, Clementine Cannibal's most recent post includes this link to things to do when you're feeling bummed. One of them is to scream along, or just listen to, an angry song. "Violet" by Hole is one of my songs of choice (I also like early Tori Amos and most anything by Diamanda Galas or The Kills.

But another important aspect of self-love that I'm trying to get better at is trusting myself. For awhile I was "confessing all my sins" or getting advice on every stupid thing I'd said or every mistake I'd made, but if I feel the need to remedy a mistake I've made or patch up something stupid I've said (which the person I've said it to probably doesn't remember anyway) It's best and easiest and do it my own way.

(Please see the post called "the self-love project" where I began this discussion of self-love.)

Hole - Violet

the self-love project

Part of self-love: I can't beat myself up every time I make a teensy, weensy mistake.

You don't know about my self-love project. It started with not doing things I don't want to do because other people expect me to do them. This includes: shaving my armpits, painting my toenails, putting insane amounts of product in my frizzy hair. I had wanted to stop shaving my armpits for awhile, and while I was seriously considering it, Clementine Cannibal wrote two blog entries on why she doesn't do it, and I took this as a sign that I should stop. Somehow, not shaving my armpits has made me feel amazingly better about myself... like i'm not just some drone or a part of the machine.

But it doesn't mean anything if I don't let myself off the hook for not being perfect. This will be harder. One of my fellow bloggists says, "Life is hairy." My armpits are a concrete example of the fact that in nature, things aren't perfectly smooth and can be a little smelly and, well, hairy.

By the way, if I get any hate comments about how disgusting hairy armpits on women are, I will not publish them. Period.

my new web site URL

elizabethcaudy.com