Dress-ing while hairy

As some of you know, I've been going through a phase of girlish femininity, what with wearing a dress every so often.
This phase has been juxtaposed by deciding to actively not removing any body hair.

So the hair on legs is at a considerable length and my underarm hair is also at maximum - I never knew the hair there was fluffy and soft! Though, anyone who has dated a guy or a girl who didn't shave/wax the hair there knwos this, it's a very different sensation when you're touching your own hair.

So, I look awesome in dresses, but I don't sculpt my body to suit the dresses, which can be construed as a contradiction when it comes to doing a feminine thing.

I went to a birthday party last night and wore a dress (the only dress I currently own, though going by the reactions last night I need to be wearing more dresses and more often) and wore footless stockings (which are basically tights the same material as stockings, but more comfy) with sandals - it is getting very hot indeed. By the time we got to my friends' house I was sweltering and I was the only girl wearing stockings - all the other girls who were wearing a dress or a skirt were going without.

My anxiety levels were beginning to rise. It's one thing to step outside in shorts and walk around the neighbourhood with your hairy legs showing, it's quite another to walk around in a highly socialised and gendered environment with hairy legs while wearing a pretty dress - especially when I'm not used to sitting in a dress (which involved a lot of crossing and uncrossing!).

So, here I am, temperature rising, my choice was keep in line with what is appropriate while wearing a dress or go "fuck it" and actually enjoy my time at this party.

I took off the stockings.

The sense of freedom was out of this world. This is the first time people outside my little social circle were witnesses to my hair. I knew that most of my friends wouldn't and couldn't care less about the fact that I'm hairy and even if they did, they had enough tact not to comment (in more one-on-one conversations and friends seeing the hair have commented and said maybe it's time to shave/wax, but the subject was dropped when I simply said no I didn't need to shave). This being a birthday party of geeks, nerds and our affiliates, social convention is not a strong suit when we bunch together - so I did obsess a tad, in my mind, being all "Oh, god, my hair is there! And curling! Every other girl here is smooth! OMG, I'm a freak among freaks!".
But my friends continued to flirt with me as I did with them, sexual innuendo was had without pause and compliments were made on how amazing the dress looked and how amazing I looked in it - as well, as good ole' bodily objectification from close friends from whom I appreciate it and they know it makes me feel pretty when it comes from them.

So, yeah, I was dress-ing while hairy and I felt good! Really good! I felt fucking hawt. Mainly, because I was. Alas, no pictures were taken last night.

Later on the drive home, I was talking to one of my closest friends in my little bunch and asked her about showing the hair. She said she had wondered about where my stockings went and confided that my legs drew her attention, but couldn't say anything about anyone else. She also mentioned that my legs kept catching her eyes and she felt uncomfortable for noticing.
We discussed that for a bit, the whole comfort/discomfort thing, because fuck did I feel exposed during the evening, but that feeling wore off as time went by and it isn't my intention to make others feel uncomfortable.
She said the discomfort was all her own, but she was really surprised by how much of a noticeable thing it is, being hairy in a dress, in public.

Yes, it very much is.

Critical Thinker rather than Free Thinker

I've come to the conclusion that I'm far too critical to be a sceptic, but also too sceptical for relativism.

Where is the balance?

I just read a comment in a friend's journal, and I haven't decided whether I'm going to reply, because I hate having these kind of discussions online. It never leads to any good, because more often than not, we arrive to a discussion like this with our heels dug in and construe any disagreement as attack.

I'm very much in the belief that people should be able to live their lives in a way that makes them content and does not harm others.
That is wishful thinking. Beyond being critical, I am also cynical. And as a Westerner of the Middle Class, my very existence, from the clothes that I wear, the food that I eat, the water I drink and the computer I used, all of them come at the expense of someone else.

I don't believe in individualism, because very often, when one tries to live in the life-style of being responsible only to one self, you end up hurting others in the process, because despite the woo-woo vocabulary, we are connected in ways that go beyond the social interaction. We are connected though economic ties, ties of power and knowledge, interaction that can be said to be cellular.

It really, really grinds my gears when I see someone talk about vaccinations and autism (as though that hasn't been debunked umpteenth times) because that isn't being critical of medical procedures, it is selfishness.
Vaccines rely on the notion that almost everyone (there are those who can't be vaccinated and there are those who are naturally immune) is vaccinated.

Once upon a time, only girls and women were vaccinated for Rubella, because it is asymptomatic in boys and men, but lo, because vaccinations are dead or weak versions of the disease, the body can still succumb to a certain disease if there is a full blown attack from the actual virus or bacteria, which men passed to women and they got sick. The percentage of Rubella dropped drastically once males began to get these vaccinations.

In Israel there was a full blown measles epidemic in various ultra-Orthodox religious neighbourhoods because they don't vaccinate their children. That's not stigma or prejudice, that's down right irresponsibility.
Those communities chose to seclude themselves from various parts of civic life, that's fine, but they don't actually live in a bubble and as such they can create a health hazard.

The critical thinking part of dealing with the fact that preventative medicine doesn't compute for many who live in alternative/intentional communities, not all and certainly not most (I hope) because the medical institution is lazy when it comes to treating people with an agenda that doesn't coincide with the mainstream notion of health - just try explaining Health At Every Size to a GP or the fact that yes, I do in fact need to be screened for STI's despite being a woman who has sex with women.

So, that's the kind of critical thinking needed when it comes to medicine, making it more accessible and reliable for different people, thus making vaccines not an enemy - because I'm looking forward to the day I can get my AIDS vaccine and not have to worry about Mumps when I'm the company of a group of vaccine rejecters.

Still, as a critical thinker, a secular atheist Jew and knowing people first hand who have suffered more under medicine than any other institution on earth I want science to do better job at helping a variety of people and not box us in into criteria that is supposed to be one size fits all. It doesn't.
What I need, isn't what my similarly aged friend needs, our experiences - physical, mental, emotional - affects us just as mush as genetics, congenital baggage and environmental changes.

My point. People are not bubbles. We interact. We breathe the same air, drink the same water, pee out the same ammonia and shit out the waste our body can thankfully live without.
The whole world had to be vaccinated in order to eradicate Small Pox.
The bigger question is, why have they stopped vaccinating us, when all it takes is digging up a grave or letting loose a vial for the world to get sick again?