Pluck
by Victoria Walters
I was thirteen when I decided to shave for the first time. Before, all the girls in my grade still had legs that went unnoticed, but the thirteenth year became a time where the untouched appendages were becoming potentially touchable by boys that had cooties last year but somehow didn’t have them anymore. It was Melissa Driver who started the trend, all because she started dating Garrett Hull, and when they sat together at lunch the first day they started dating, he put his hand on her knee and freaked out—finding her leg hair too much like his own busy appendage rather than soft and downy, like the feathers of a swan. She returned the next day, plucked, knowing Garrett would have his socks knocked off by the smoothness of her legs.
Soon, everyone was doing it. Some wore a band-aid plastered here and there where the blades cut off more than the innocuous fluff. I was still skeptical. I couldn’t comprehend how the razor blades skimmed over the surface, only cutting the shafts of hair and leaving the plump skin unharmed. It wasn’t until I was the last duckling standing, my plumes fluffed and abundant, that I asked my mom to show me how. She was in the shower, the glass door covered with steam. I knocked on the glass and she permitted me entrance. I laid out the tools and awaited her sagely guidance. She voiced her concerns of my premature defeathering. She reminded me that swans were defenseless and rather ugly looking without their feathers, that my remaining strands made me beautifully unique in a valley of featherless swans. But I reminded her that the ugly duckling didn’t make friends until she looked like the rest of the swans, at least not in middle school. I put my leg up on the stool as she instructed, lathered my chicken leg with the shaving cream, and watched in horror as she moved the razor up my shin. I waited for blood to spurt from the capillaries, for the blood to cover the sides of the shower, sending my dad into a frenzy where he would call an ambulance that wouldn’t get me to the hospital on time. The family would mourn my death and sue Melissa Driver, the instigator of the cultish act and have her burned at the stake.
But, when my mom lifted the razor at the bottom of my knee cap, there was only a smooth line of skin left behind. She handed me the tool and encouraged me to try. The cool blades kissed my skin and they left sloppy snail trails up my leg.
The next day I flaunted my shiny new legs as my fellow dolphins and I walked down the halls with confidence.
While we were beautiful smooth-legged girls, we had lost the armor of men. We had made ourselves different. Not thinking that we had lost the means to fly.
I was thirteen when I decided to shave for the first time. Before, all the girls in my grade still had legs that went unnoticed, but the thirteenth year became a time where the untouched appendages were becoming potentially touchable by boys that had cooties last year but somehow didn’t have them anymore. It was Melissa Driver who started the trend, all because she started dating Garrett Hull, and when they sat together at lunch the first day they started dating, he put his hand on her knee and freaked out—finding her leg hair too much like his own busy appendage rather than soft and downy, like the feathers of a swan. She returned the next day, plucked, knowing Garrett would have his socks knocked off by the smoothness of her legs.
Soon, everyone was doing it. Some wore a band-aid plastered here and there where the blades cut off more than the innocuous fluff. I was still skeptical. I couldn’t comprehend how the razor blades skimmed over the surface, only cutting the shafts of hair and leaving the plump skin unharmed. It wasn’t until I was the last duckling standing, my plumes fluffed and abundant, that I asked my mom to show me how. She was in the shower, the glass door covered with steam. I knocked on the glass and she permitted me entrance. I laid out the tools and awaited her sagely guidance. She voiced her concerns of my premature defeathering. She reminded me that swans were defenseless and rather ugly looking without their feathers, that my remaining strands made me beautifully unique in a valley of featherless swans. But I reminded her that the ugly duckling didn’t make friends until she looked like the rest of the swans, at least not in middle school. I put my leg up on the stool as she instructed, lathered my chicken leg with the shaving cream, and watched in horror as she moved the razor up my shin. I waited for blood to spurt from the capillaries, for the blood to cover the sides of the shower, sending my dad into a frenzy where he would call an ambulance that wouldn’t get me to the hospital on time. The family would mourn my death and sue Melissa Driver, the instigator of the cultish act and have her burned at the stake.
But, when my mom lifted the razor at the bottom of my knee cap, there was only a smooth line of skin left behind. She handed me the tool and encouraged me to try. The cool blades kissed my skin and they left sloppy snail trails up my leg.
The next day I flaunted my shiny new legs as my fellow dolphins and I walked down the halls with confidence.
While we were beautiful smooth-legged girls, we had lost the armor of men. We had made ourselves different. Not thinking that we had lost the means to fly.