dear heather,
I am very different than everyone else because I am hairy. I have hairy arms and legs. Everyone at school makes fun of me, except my friends. I don’t know what to say to everyone else, though. Help!!!

Although you might be feeling “different” right now, pretty much everybody has body hair or will develop it during the course of their lives. We’re all born with a certain amount of it–head hair, peach fuzz, etc.–and during puberty, coarser, usually darker hair will often appear in new places: the crotch, underarms, upper lip, legs, arms, and various other areas. You name it, and it can grow hair. Hair growth being a fact of life doesn’t necessarily make it any less embarrassing for you, but everyone has their own unique hairy (or lack of hair) situation to deal with it.

Check out “On Being Hairy” for the way one person has dealt with her own unique hair situation. Using humor and just ignoring those who bother you are generally good tactics to employ in the war against people who are being stupid or might just be insecure about their own hidden hairs, lack of hairs etc.

If your hair situation gets to the point where you just can’t deal with either the hair or the teasing anymore or you decide for some other reason that you would rather not have hair in some certain place, you might want to consider some sort of hair removal. There are lots of options for this type of thing–tweezing/plucking, trimming, depilatories, shaving, bleaching, waxing, electrolysis or laser hair removal. What you decide to do with it is completely up to you. I think people have to experiment a lot to find out what works for them and change strategies often in the face of continually growing hair.

take care,
heather