Meet the Body Hair Activist Who’s Inspiring Women to Embrace Their Natural Beauty

The hair removal market is estimated to reach $2.51 billion by 2031 for laser procedures alone. As body grooming is trending more and more, the pressure on women to always have skin as smooth as butter is increasing as well.

While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to remove your body hair or deciding to keep it, artist and activist Esther Calixte-Bea wants to normalize natural female beauty and spread a message loud and proud: all women don’t look a certain way, and they don’t have to.

Self-acceptance was the first step.

Ester, who is more commonly known as body activist Queen Esie, felt the pressure to shave her body hair up until 2018. She reveals she shaved every inch of her body for a magazine photoshoot and felt insecure because of all the bumps and ingrown hairs that followed after.

“I HATED being hairy and having to waste so much time having to remove my body hair,” she shared in an Instagram post. Tired of it all, Esie embraced her body hair and natural beauty.

Esie decided to challenge the outdated beauty standards.

According to Esie, the beauty industry wants women to look a certain way and promote body hair removal in the name of hygiene. The Montreal-based artist is all about self-love and acceptance now, saying, “I challenged myself to go as I am to the beach for the first time. Hair on almost every inch of my body. I felt proud and FREE!”

As a body-positive activist, she wishes for equal love for all bodies.

All bodies deserve to be loved, hairy or not. Esie believes the choice of wanting to remove body hair or not should be given to women without repercussions. “I want to show women that they can go to a gala with their chest hair and leg hair on display.”

She uses her art to be a voice for female beauty as well.

Representation matters, and growing up, Esie couldn’t find women like herself, so she decided to speak through her art. She now presents her artwork featuring women with body hair in exhibitions, hoping to influence the younger generation to feel comfortable in their bodies.

How do you prefer to deal with your body hair?