I’ve got a hairy issue to address and I want to bring it up now before it gets too warm outside.

You see, when the sun comes out so do the shorts, which means I will have to start shaving on a semi-regular basis again. I’ll do it not because I enjoy it, but because I know I can’t handle the grimaces on others’ faces when they see my dark leg hair against my pasty winter skin. It’s my curse, you see, that I was born bleach-blonde and grew up to have dark leg hair, a phenomena with which many women of Germanic and Scandinavian descent can empathize.

Outside the women who fall into this unfortunate category, however, are all women who struggle daily with keeping their hair-from their heads to their toes-under control. For some it’s a higher priority than for others, and for many it truly is a challenge. Whatever the case may be, I don’t think I’m singing solo when I say that dealing with my hair is a hassle.

For instance, to keep the two armies that are set on colliding in the middle of my face at bay (these are my thick, impressive eyebrows that would be a unibrow if it weren’t for my intervention), I probably spend at least five minutes a day plucking runaway hairs. That’s half an hour every week! And though there’s nothing fun about tweezing rebel hairs from one of the most sensitive parts of my face (my upper lip), I admit that it certainly beats being teased about having a better mustache than most high-school boys.

And I won’t get into details about the rest of the hair on my body, though I will say that razor burn in any of the must-be-shaved regions is about as fun as taking a bath in glass-shard soup.

More important than the suffering I put myself through, though, is the bigger question: Why do we do this to ourselves?

Some would argue that the cosmetic companies have won our wallets-hair removal products for females is a billion-dollar industry, after all-but I don’t think that it’s as simple as that. And though many of us will say that we feel sexy with silky-smooth legs, I have yet to meet a woman who genuinely enjoys shaving. Pain means gain? If gain means losing money on shaving cream and razors, maybe, but in this context I think pain simply means pain (I’ve got the scars to prove it).

When I was in eighth grade, one of my friends asked if she could pluck my eyebrows. At first I said no, but then she asked again, with a pleading, almost bloodthirsty look in her eyes. Because I was afraid she wouldn’t ask me to hang out with her, I let her do it. In other words, I let some shallow kid yank hair out of my face because I was afraid that I wouldn’t fit in, that I wouldn’t be accepted.

So maybe that’s why women shave, pluck, tweeze, groom, style and wax our different hairs-we fear that if we don’t, we’ll be excluded from womanhood. And trust me, there are few things worse for women than being left out.

This being said, perhaps we can start a revolution together. I think my hairiness might actually be growing on me.