The other day I saw a student of mine, and I know I am imposing my cultural values in this judgment, but I just couldn’t help it. Americans are clean freaks about their bodies, and though I know my student is not “unclean”, I received a rather interesting surprise anyway.

It has been hotter than hell in Texas lately. Today’s 80s seem rather chilly to me, and when the wind blows I can taste winter in it rather than the unending high pressure system that usually camps out over the state all summer. My students wear short-sleeved shirts often, and so do I as a matter of fact. Most of the time this student wears regular t-shirts. I think. I am going through all of this detail because I cannot figure out how I missed it before. I think she wears regular t-shirts, because I never had cause to note her dress before this day. She was wearing a little cute cap-sleeve number and we were conversing, and she raised her hand to gesture and then I saw it.

An underarm bunny. Wispy and black, insubstantial compared to what an American woman would have, but still shocking.

She doesn’t shave her pits.

In school I knew a Korean girl who had absolutely no hair on her legs and I was so jealous. She never had to shave. Other girls teased me because my mom didn’t want to let me shave my legs. She said I wasn’t “old enough”. But the cute baby fuzz that she so adored had me ridiculed at school. I was called sasquatch and hairball and other names related to my hairiness. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not hirsute by any stretch of the imagination. But these girls were already waxing and I still had babyish fuzz all down my legs, especially notable in PE class. So I was justifiably jealous of the Korean girl.

Now, I do miss a day now and then, and I feel disgusted and unclean if I don’t shave under my arms. My husband thinks it’s funny and teases me if I don’t shave. Yeah, that helps. So I have ingrained in me a deep respect for shaven underarms. Unshaven armpits mean I am unclean and possibly stinky. Even a haze of hair and I want to run for the shaver.

But my student…wow. It was a shock to me like finding out that she was a lesbian, or had a closet fetish for latex that I suddenly happened upon. I felt ashamed of noticing it. As if I had caught her with her pants down in the restroom. And she had no idea.

I think no less of her for this, but in fact felt ashamed of my shame. I am sure a shame culture has a single word for this, but English doesn’t. So I remain confused about the whole thing, and I hope she doesn’t know it. In my reaction to this normal (in her country) behavior, and certainly not unnatural state of affairs, I find out more about who I am and who I think I am. And I find that my mind is not all that open after all. But I am not the only one. Pamie, of www.pamie.com, had written an entire treatise on underarms and shaving to “educate” the less fortunate girls in her audience who never had a proper education on shaving. Now I search her blog and find nothing about it. Maybe it is from “old pamie”…But I laughed along with her on the pitfalls of shaving. Now I wonder about it all.