The summer before my junior year I had an epiphany. Sitting by the pool with my laptop, working out the details of some short story idea I thought was ingenious at the time, I caught a glimpse of my forearms. They were,
with long sleeves most months of the year, and when it got too hot I just kept my arms crossed. This poolside summer day was different. Scanning over the short strands of keratin that had been the bane of my tween
Shaving Revisited An Exercise in Melodrama as is common for people of both Italian and Polynesian descent, covered in a crisscrossing layer of thick, dark hair. This was not my first time realizing that I had hair on my arms. Far from it, in fact. In my elementary school days I had been painfully aware of the hair on my arms. So unbearably aware that I wore jackets
existence, I felt not the shame and disgust whom I had accepted as my constant middle school companions, but something so unfamiliar to me I could barely comprehend it: indifference. I sat, dumbfounded, struggling to process the fact that I could see myself, arm hair and all, and not care.
Georgetowner 2020 Dysphoria, Sara Manzano Davila, watercolor
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