I first started shaving my body hair in school. If you took a Yeti, covered him in glue and then rolled him around on a barbershop floor, it would take a look at my legs and start worrying about looking like one of those weird hairless Egyptian cats by comparison.
It’s fair to say that it was negatively impacting my body image and mental health in ways that I didn’t yet, that no-one yet, had the vocabulary for (this being 1987). So one day I took the plunge and shaved my legs. I figured, what the hell? Who was going to see my legs under my school trousers anyway?
The next day was school sports day, and I and my newly gleaming legs had to compete in the 800m, 1500m and triple jump in front of the whole school.
