So far these are all from guys. Sure, it would suck to shave your face because it’s right there for everyone to see, but girls do have more area to shave. To start, I’m only speaking about what I know to be true in the (western) United States. If customs are different elsewhere, please write about it because I’d love to learn how they differ.

The age for girls to start shaving is getting younger and younger. It’s pretty ridiculous. Most girls I knew were shaving their legs in 6th grade, but my mom convinced me to wait another year. For the first few years it’s something new, exciting, and different. You feel older and even sexier to have sleek legs. Either every day or every other day you take that razor to your legs.

Some time passes, and it gets old. Shaving takes up precious sleeping time at night or in the morning. Sometimes you’ll cut yourself which can really hurt, bleed, even leave an unsightly scar. The red bumps that can occur from irritation are a pretty addition to your legs as well. If you’ll be wearing pants or a long skirt, why bother? If you shave in a hurry you’re likely to miss a spot or two, which may be worse than just not shaving at all. Soon enough you learn that the less often you shave, the slower the hair grows back after you have.

Whether you have a boyfriend may affect the frequency of your shaving. If your guy doesn’t care, you don’t feel too pressured to very often. If he really likes the smooth feel, you’ll likely want to shave more often. If you’re looking for a guy, you’ll want to look nice and probably shave more often. If you’re single and want to stay that way, you’ll do it when you feel like looking nice for yourself.

Most of the girls that I’m friends with now go a week or two between shaving. We laugh at how lazy we are. Having a boyfriend doesn’t really affect our laziness-they always seem to accept it. Once we actually do shave, we like it a lot. Guess there just isn’t enough motivation to always want to maintain that.

There are varying degrees of how much is shaved. A rising trend has been to shave your arms. That one takes quite a bit of maintenance. Another that needs frequent attention is the bikini line or all of “down there”. I don’t think that I know anyone too lazy to keep their underarms clear of hair. Girls are also expected to keep their eyebrows neat and smaller than they would normally. Plucking hurts. Some girls do their toes and tops of feet. Legs can be done to the knees, just above the knees, half way up your thighs, or the entire leg. Seems that most girls do it pretty far up their thighs. I feel bad for any extraordinarily hairy girls who have to do more than I’ve already mentioned-that just sucks.

It doesn’t seem too fair that a guy can choose to grow a beard or at least leave a chosen section unshaven, but girls would be looked at funny if they let their legs go. Stubble on a guy’s face can even look sexy, but stubble on legs is usually a turn-off. I realize that there are a few brave men out there who shave their legs, arms, etc. I have to wonder if they’re crazy to want to shave more than they have to, but it does hold a certain appeal... and I know I would want to maintain better if my hypothetical guy started having smoother legs than I did.