Beauty confidential

Not long ago it was all about fat, but these days body hair is the feminist issue. To grow or not to grow? Actually, it’s more complicated than that: to grow, to shave, to laser away for ever? Then you have to decide where it is you’re prepared to get hairy, and where you have to smooth things away.

With the exception of groups such as the female debate hub the Vagenda, most people seem to think legs must be hair-free. Spot someone on the Tube with hairy legs, never mind hairy legs inside tights, and you’ll see a carriage full of shudders and confused glances. The bush, of course, has long been liberated. Helmut Newton would surely be proud to see it freed from removal tyranny: everything from a Brazilian to a 1970s let-it-fly-free approach is OK. Now the battleground has moved to our underarms. The creative make-up artist Alex Box tells me she was almost beaten up in a club because of her hairy armpits. And that was by a woman, whose horror at seeing a woman with hirsute pits pushed her over the edge. Youngsters, in particular, are reclaiming this territory — and I don’t just mean Miley Cyrus. Take the New York craze for girls to grow their underarm hair and dye it all sorts of zany colours. You could say “ugh”, and not that long ago that might have been my first reaction too. But these days I sense we’re all far more likely to say: “Good for them. It’s time for women to reclaim their bodies, right down to the last hair follicle.”