When singer Halsey posted a picture of herself on her Twitter account, it shouldn’t have been a seismic event. But when a ‘body shamer’ reposted the picture, covering up her armpit hair, she hit back publicly, questioning why he’d done it. This wasn’t an isolated incident, rather the latest in a line of celebrities being ‘outed’ for their body hair choices.

Earlier this year Madonna posted a picture of herself and daughter Lourdes that went viral — not for the bond between them, but for Lourdes not shaving her armpits. Madonna herself has posted armpit-hair pictures with the caption: “Long hair, don’t care”. And everyone from Ashley Graham and Charli XCX to Miley Cyrus and Bella Thorne — the latter recently took down trolls who messaged her saying she should remove her body hair — is becoming more vocal about body hair choices and the implications behind them.

Why haven’t we moved further away from lambasting women for their body-hair preferences? It’s been 20 years since Julia Roberts’ fluffy armpits entered the public consciousness at the Notting Hill premiere in 1999, and she occupied front pages around the world, not for her role in the much-loved rom-com, but for having the audacity to a) not shave her armpits and b) appear to have zero ‘remorse’ about it. The media disdain was palpable: here was a Hollywood icon, a ‘beauty’, making herself look ‘unfeminine’ in a way that A-list celebrities just didn’t do. And the question her actions elicited has loomed over us since: why do we attach so much importance to women’s body hair, its visibility and its supposed ‘meaning’?

While the topic of body fuzz tends to still evoke the same reactions as it did 20 years ago — especially since the rise of social media means we’re more open about our beauty tastes and preferences — what has changed since Julia’s ‘armpitgate’ is our spectrum of attitudes towards it. Brands like Fur Oil and Bush Oil — aimed at embracing body hair as much as we do the hair on our heads — have emerged and, according to researchers Mintel, women agree there’s too much pressure to remove or groom body hair.

The accounts by these five women shine a light on why people do or don’t remove their body hair, explore the political aspects of hair grooming and reveal a new mindset about body hair that is less about right or wrong, and more about personal choice and freedom.

Me, my hair, and I: Five women on their relationships with their body hair