Our February digital issue celebrates self-love and beauty in all its glorious forms. One woman leading the charge on social media is Esther Calixte-Bea – a Montreal-based artist whose photographic series, Lavender, is a self-liberating photography project about body hair and femininity. In her self-portraits, Esther proudly displays her chest hair in all its glory and accompanies each photo with an empowering poem or quote. Here, Esther tells GLAMOUR how her body journey began, how she deals with social media trolls and what it’s like being a role model for people all over the world.
What has your body image journey been like?
In high school, I was very shy and insecure. I hated myself because not only was I too skinny compared to other girls my age, who were very curvy and desired by boys, I was also hairy. My mother use to make my sister and I stand in front of the mirror and repeat the phrases “I’m pretty, I’m smart and I’m beautiful” almost every day. She used to tell me that it would only work if I believed and said those words with confidence. Over time, I used her advice, it did help me love myself a little more but I had noticed that I wasn’t like other girls.
I had chest hair, and a lot of body hair. No matter what I did, whether it was waxing or shaving, they seemed to grow back longer, stronger and blacker than before. In university, I stopped trying to remove my chest hair and simply kept it hidden, lifting up my shirt if it was too low and using every precaution to make sure that no one would see it. It became exhausting and I realised how my body hair issues were affecting me mentally.
As an artist, art making was a way for me to express how I felt. I created a painting called You Must Suffer to Be Beautiful which was what my aunt and mother would tell me when my body hair had to be removed painfully. I had been going through these various procedures since I was 11, which is when I first started to get chest hair. It took me over ten year at the age of 22 to finally accept my body and to love it through prayer and working on myself.
What inspired your Lavender series?
Lavender is a self-photography & self-liberating project, inspired by my own body hair struggles and the secret I had been hiding all my life; my chest hair. The project is about femininity and body hair, I had had enough of always hiding my chest hair and damaging my skin. My body was tired of what I was putting her through, but I didn’t know how to tell my friends about my chest hair since no one had seen it before. As an artist, I thought about ways I could express what I was going through and finally liberate myself from these societal beauty standards that were put on me at a young age. After making this realisation through prayer, I concluded that there was nothing wrong with me but there was something wrong with society as it was benefitting off women’s self-hatred, which they were encouraging by promoting the image of the ideal woman to make billions off our insecurities, to the detriment of our physical and mental health.
I often compared grass and plants that grow naturally to body hair through my paintings and poetry. Since my grandparents and mother knew how to sew, I always knew it was in my blood and wanted to challenge myself by creating a lavender coloured dress. The dress was double sided; one side that covered my chest hair to address my personal struggles and the other side that revealed it. I wore the dress while keeping in mind that I wanted the poses to be powerful and elegant to show that women with body hair are beautiful. Instagram became the perfect tool for me, as I knew it could reach my followers, others and get a conversation started.
How have you dealt with the trolls? What would be your advice for others dealing with trolls?
The worst that happened by posting the Lavender project on Instagram was losing followers. I had only received a negative comment from a cousin, while the rest were many positive comments and women from around the world sharing their personal experiences, how the project had inspired them and others sharing their reactions. Months later, I started receiving a few negative comments under my pictures that I simply deleted or simply made the choice to block the individuals. What I tell myself when I receive these negative comments is “Apparently, you are so important that people take the time to comment negativity under your pictures.” In other words, if someone takes a minute of their lives to pause and write a mean comment under your picture, they have nothing better to do and maybe you are actually doing something good. At the end of the day, I think it is important to focus on the positive comments and the impact you are making in other peoples lives, they weigh more than the negativity.
What are the positives and the negatives of social media?
As a teenager, social media had a negative impact on me to the point that I started getting ideas of making body enhancements, not that I’m judging anyone that makes that decision. Simply that to me this decision would have been unhealthy, and the consequence of self-hate and not a conscious decision but rather a reaction to society to make myself feel whole or desirable. The negative part of social media is the power it has on your mental health and how it can make you very self-conscious of how you look. Social media has now started to impact my life positively because I learned to use it in a way that doesn’t alter the way I see myself. When I realised that I hold the power to choose what I want to see on my timeline, I decided to unfollow every influencer that did not look like me, so that I may not be comparing myself to them.
I then started to look for women that had a similar body type to mine and that were confident in who they were. When I could see myself through them, I began to feel more confident. I did also find Instagram accounts of girls who accepted their body and who flaunted their body hair. Especially when it was truly out of the ordinary, for example, women accepting and loving their beards, moustaches or unibrow, although I did not find many. I would often go back on their accounts and admire their bravery. Social media is a tool, a powerful one to say the least and I believe that we have the power to use it positively or negatively. The positive side of social media is that there is such a wide range of visual information that you can find and it all depends on how you use it. We also have the choice to simply turn it off if it becomes overwhelming.
What more can social networks do to combat negativity online?
Social networks have given us the option to block, delete, report, restrict and disable our comment section. I think it’s important to know that negative comments and mean people are inevitable. Being aware of how much these comments affect us is a good thing. Once you begin to realise this you can see that there is still work to be done on yourself. This negativity will make you stronger, that’s how I see it. I don’t see what more social networks can do, we all have free speech, and some decide to use it to hurt others. At the end of day, we need to learn to be kinder to everyone no matter what.
Why is body hair so empowering?
Originally showing my chest hair wasn’t empowering. I simply did so to liberate myself from this burden and live authentically, I even hoped it would help others like myself. After hearing different stories from around the world, that’s when I realised how impactful my project has been and how truly empowering it was to embrace oneself.
Body hair became empowering because I had set myself free from this prison I felt I was in, that society had constructed for us women. In different cultures, body hair is seen as beautiful on some part of the body. When I went to Haiti last year, I remembered my cousin telling me that he found girls with moustaches cute and I saw women not shaving their armpit hair, which was a great relief. Body hair became empowering to me once I realised that women have body hair and it is completely normal and natural. Many women have sideburns, beards, moustaches, unibrows, hairy armpits, hairy legs, hairy arms, hair around their nipples, on their chin and even chest hair like myself, but they simply remove it like everyone else, since we are pressured to do so. When I became aware of that, I realised that I was not alone and that we are all tired of shaving. Some women are hairier than others, have thin or thicker hair and that’s a characteristic that makes us unique much like hair colour, eye colour and skin tone. I began to feel in control and powerful once I started loving myself and when society couldn’t affect the way I saw my body anymore. Through my paintings, I continue to promote female body hair through the characters I create.
What is the best advice you could give to someone to help them become body positive?
Be aware of how you feel about your body and how this negative way of seeing yourself is actually detrimental. To even try to identity how your negative thoughts are triggered is an important step. Look at the people/ influencers you follow, if you feel that you are comparing yourself negatively to them, unfollow them and search for influencers that look more like you. Or that make you feel confident and have positive thoughts when you look at them. For example, seeing someone with your body type wearing something you would have never worn because you feel uncomfortable with your own body may help you realise that if they can wear that you can too.
In other words, everything we see goes into our subconscious and becomes food/fuel for our brain and personal growth, being aware of what you take in is key. The most important advice I can give you is be kind to yourself. Every day, look at yourself in the mirror, every chance you get, even your reflection in the street and say someone thing nice, something simple like “I’m beautiful” will make a difference.
It took me over ten years to love myself. I could never rush anyone and could never say that it is easy. It takes time but it starts with a decision to make a difference in your own life and to start embracing what makes you unique.
One more thing that also helped me was to challenge myself. For instance, I never wore V-necks because I believed that as a woman with chest hair I was not aloud, and that was a rule I had created for myself. Once I broke that rule, I started wearing tops that showed my chest hair and I realised that I had stopped myself from living. Sometimes we are our own biggest enemy. That’s ok. Knowing this will help you be better and become your own best friend.
