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Cara Delevingne has never been one to shy from bucking gender norms. And in Her Smell, an indie film about an all-female ’90s punk band that also stars Elisabeth Moss and Delevingne’s rumored girlfriend Ashley Benson, she continues to push boundaries. "I never thought I would need armpit hair again after getting laser... I was wrong," she wrote on Instagram alongside a Cass Bird-shot portrait of her sporting a choppy platinum mullet and two thick bushels of armpit hair on set. "Introducing ARMPIT WIGS!"
A natural-born rebel, the 26-year-old model and actress isn t exactly one for regrets, but considering how at home she is wearing the underarm equivalent of a merkin, she may be a bit remorseful of having undergone the permanent hair removal treatment. "No actor has ever loved any part of their character’s design more," the film s director Alex Ross Perry mused in the comments, considering her transformation into fictional young musician Crassie Cassie. Real or not, Delevingne joins a fierce lineup of women who ve similarly challenged the limiting beauty ideals women have faced since, well, always—but is also embodying the growing toss-the-razor movement. In addition to a greater embrace of the au naturale look all over, a recent study showed that nearly one in four women under the age of 25 has stopped shaving their underarms. "With the rise of social media as a ‘filterless’ platform, women are becoming more comfortable discussing [their] body hair,” explain Lillian Tung and Laura Schubert, co-founders of the pubic hair and skin company Fur.
The bottom line is that a woman s choice to groom—or not groom—her body hair is her choice, and her choice alone. But as a beauty trailblazer admired for her bold choices and unwavering confidence, Delevingne s underarm fuzz endorsement is an audacious statement worth celebrating.
