00:00Oh no, I can't go on a date right now, I haven't shaved.
00:02What a ridiculous thing to say!
00:05I would never say it off, so I actually need to cut my hair off before I go on this date.
00:09It's kind of vulnerable, isn't it?
00:15I know that now it's summer and it's getting kind of hot
00:19and it might be a bummer if you're worried about your bod
00:23so all I want to say is if you're scared to wear a bikini
00:26just wear one anyway because you do not have to be skinny
00:29you got a bikini body.
00:31Hi my name's Jo, also known as Jo Brown or Jo Vlogs on TikTok.
00:35Over lockdown I stopped shaving for various different reasons,
00:39mainly due to laziness.
00:44At the time I was starting up a TikTok channel
00:47which was initially kind of a creative outlet
00:49but also kind of slowly became a body positivity channel
00:53to kind of, you know, encourage and inspire young people to love their bodies
00:57and think a bit more about what they choose to do with their bodies
00:59and not just feel the pressure to conform
01:02and do whatever else is doing on social media.
01:04I appeared in a video with my armpit hair on show
01:08and then got, you know, instantly trolled for it
01:10which I found really funny.
01:12Just your daily reminder that you can be sexy and have roles at the same time.
01:15Oh and body hair.
01:17That's all.
01:18Bye bye now.
01:18As a rebuttal I decided to actively kind of, you know,
01:22stop shaving and started making a few videos about it.
01:27It really shocked me that so many people had something to say about it
01:30and were so disgusted and repulsed by a woman appearing on camera,
01:34you know, in her normal body hair.
01:36I kind of enjoyed it.
01:37I felt like quite liberating and quite empowering
01:40and I kind of saw it as like a new version of beauty, you know.
01:45We're so used to seeing what we see in the media
01:48with hairless women, like perfect tan, slim, skinny bodies,
01:51you know, all these kind of like airbrushing
01:53that we've seen over the last few years.
01:56I know girls who, you know, will wake up, they'll say at a guy's house,
02:00they'll wake up, go and touch up their makeup
02:03and get back into bed with the boys and be like perfectly made up.
02:07I was like, what?
02:09I don't do that.
02:15I wouldn't say I'm against shaving.
02:17You should do what's right for your body at the end of the day.
02:19I think it's a shame that we kind of get brainwashed
02:23into conforming to these social standards
02:25and these social beauty standards at a very young age.
02:27I started shaving when I was 11 because I thought it was the damn thing
02:31and that's what my sisters did and friends were doing.
02:34I've never enjoyed shaving my armpits specifically.
02:37It's just a real, really sad that we live in a society
02:40where it's just the norm because, you know,
02:43once upon a time someone decided that they were going to encourage women to do it.
02:47You know, I think it comes from the 80s porn industry massively.
02:50You know, back in the 1920s, women never shaved.
02:53It's just really in the last 100 years or so.
03:00I've seen firsthand the damaging content there is online.
03:05Even the filters on Instagram and TikTok and women are being told that
03:09if you want to be beautiful, you need to look like this.
03:12That's not true.
03:14We should be encouraging women to learn and study and love themselves
03:19and work on their brains and their bodies, you know,
03:22not work on their beauty.
03:29I share a lot online.
03:31I'm a massive advocate for helping others and trying to inspire other people
03:34and I know there are a lot of women out there who aren't as confident as I am.
03:40My channel is all about self-love and self-acceptance
03:43and encouraging people to not judge everyone and just be themselves
03:47and not feel the need to rip other people apart
03:50and tell them what to do with their bodies.
03:52It's ridiculous that we think we're in an age
03:54where people can just comment on a video
03:56and have such a direct impact on someone's life
03:59and what they choose to do with their body.
04:01It's so bizarre how we have these weird relationships to hair all over your body.
04:07It's just hair.
04:09It's just hair.
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