I’m glad to see that I am not the only one who has noticed that this tendency is not exactly healthy, and that perhaps there has been a shift emerging of late in mass media.

I would hazard to say this is a common theme for nearly every female-presenting girl on earth who has noticeable body hair regardless of skin or hair colour and regardless of where on earth they grow up, however I do believe the pressures are heightened in English speaking nations due to the tendency of glamorizing fair haired women over the past 100 years in the media. It’s not even that the attention or comment in and of itself was particularly negative, it is simply that there was attention to point out a difference, and the difference wasn’t being celebrated, it was being questioned. There is a very common shared experience of being singled out as a child and from that point on wanting nothing more than to be like everyone else without noticeable hair. The plot of Hana publicly discovering her arm hair and in the same moment being alienated with it, was exactly the story that almost every participant in Project WWHA has shared about their lives. This aspect goes to show and teach a child the reality of arm and body hair as being ubiquitous and I think may even be a first for a children’s book in the world ever. Although the main story centred around the body hair of just Hana, I was giddy to see both that Hana noticed, and the illustrations showed body hair present on numerous other characters in the book.

The characters presented in the book each have their own unique skin and hair colour, which I found refreshing and furthermore each had their own different style of body hair which was shown in the illustrations as well. The full bleed imagery and artwork is completely top notch. The aesthetics of this book in terms of its presentation of colours and illustrative quality is right up there with other top children’s books that we are reading with fairy and unicorn or traditionally feminine fantasy themes. The physical presentation of the book in terms of its size, paper quality, binding and print quality was comparable to other books that we read.

Women with hairy arms flickr