College is a busy time for most women. The last thing they want to think about is shaving. But even though most of us can’t even keep our sleep cycles regulated, making our bodies appear hairless is something we feel we absolutely must do.

Women put up with the tedious, time-consuming, sometimes painful and sometimes expensive task of removing their hair in the name of normalcy. Today, if you are a female, shaving or waxing isn’t considered vain; it’s the bare minimum.

It’s a generally accepted idea that hairy women are offensive. It is as if we believe we, individually, are the only ones capable of growing this body hair. Therefore, we must keep it secret, lest the sight of our hideousness gives some random onlooker a heart attack.

After years of shaving, waxing, plucking, using smelly or burning lotions and even considering dropping thousands of dollars on permanent hair removal, it is likely most females have bitterly acknowledged the double standard. Yet when pioneers such as Paula Cole shocked the world by flaunting armpits au naturale at the Grammys in 1998, people recoiled from her statement.

This begs the question: Why are we so quick to be disgusted by, rather than accepting of, our natural state? More importantly, why, after coming so far, do women not question the shallow standards to which they are expected to adhere?

Our society has fueled a billion-dollar cosmetics business; we pay homage to Hollywood “royalty”; and we salute a fashion industry with a disproportionate amount of influence. It seems easier to give in to an imposing standard of beauty because it is viewed as just that – a standard.

Perhaps the issue really isn’t about hair at all. Perhaps it’s about being encouraged, in the form of everything from beauty magazines to our modern-day role models, to reject one’s natural appearance. The more money women will spend to ease their insecurities is all the more incentive for the beauty industry to tell us what is wrong with how we look.

The shaving of one’s legs really isn’t the problem, but our ready acceptance of its importance is. Society continues to turn a blind eye to the thousands who suffer from eating disorders each year and to the impressionable minds who have accepted this beauty standard at a dangerously young age. No big corporations that make their money catering to these impossible physical standards and none of those ecstatic models in the makeup commercials are going to tell us that we’re OK just the way we are.

And very few little girls (or boys, for that matter) who are growing up in this world will have an example of someone who actually believes we are, in fact, OK just the way we are. Unless we make the choice to think and act differently – one hairy day at a time.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.