A short but effective look at why women shave, and whether it really is "because we want to." Coming in at just over 60 pages, Olid describes her own increasingly hairy journey while also looking at the pressures that encourage femme-presenting people to go hairless. She points out the high creep factor involved in regularly removing an adult feature in order to appear simultaneously more sexy and more child-like. She needles the double-standards (although too-hairy men are also subjected to ridicule and pressure of their own), and reminds the reader that all femme-folk do not face the same smooth-skin expectations. Olid discusses the calculations involved, pointing out that if one decides to remain hairy, one can avoid most ridicule if one follows every other feminine practice and/or is already extremely conventionally attractive.

A lot of what she writes resonated with me, since during the pandemic and recently 40, I tried to answer the question of why I was bothering to shave my legs. I could come up with no satisfactory answer other than I always had, and it was permanently lodged in my brain as a thing that made you look better/neater/cleaner. But it's no healthier, and ultimately for many of us: will anyone die if we are not "pretty?" The answer is (usually) no, and for those of us not immediately at risk for presenting as less conventionally feminine, we can help move the needle by embracing a range of hair displays.

Translated from Catalan.