Women have hair on their legs. So what? At the Venice Film Festival, Phoebe Bridgers showed off the most normal thing in the world: hairy legs

Phoebe Bridgers arrived at the Venice International Film Festival wearing a Gucci skirt suit from the Fall 2026 collection, Stuart Weitzman Babette pumps, Gucci sunglasses, a Leo Black Grandfather silver ring and unshaved legs. One of these things clearly stole the spotlight from the others. Not the miniskirt, not the look, not her acting debut in Primetime. The hair. Social media erupted in applause, comments about body hair positivity, and celebrations of rebellion against beauty standards. All very fair. But also very strange. Why does a woman not shaving have to mean something? Maybe Phoebe Bridgers simply had better things to do than pick up a razor.

A woman with body hair can never be left alone

A man with hairy legs has hairy legs. End of story. Nobody looks at those calves and thinks he is reclaiming natural masculinity, challenging the male gaze or ushering in a new era of body positivity. Nor does anyone think it is disgusting. For women, things work differently. A pair of unshaved legs or armpits can become a statement about feminism, punk, rebellion, authenticity, or even a new beauty trend. Basically, male body hair simply exists. Female body hair, on the other hand, seems to need an explanation whether it is there or not. The reason is that we have learned to consider hair removal an almost automatic part of female body care. I have been removing my body hair forever, probably since elementary school. First my eyebrows, then my armpits, legs, bikini area, upper lip and, once I reached an age when apparently I did not already have enough things to do, even dermaplaning. The goal? To be as smooth as a dolphin. Not because anyone explicitly told me to, but because I had absorbed the idea that female body hair was ugly, unattractive, unkempt or even unhygienic. A belief built through images, comments, advertising and representations of the female body that taught us to see spending time and money to remove a perfectly natural part of our bodies as completely normal.

The freedom to do whatever we want

Razors, waxing, laser hair removal, tweezers, creams, scrubs, regrowth, folliculitis… female hair removal requires a surprising amount of work to make something disappear that the body stubbornly keeps producing and that should not bother us quite this much in the first place. In recent years, though, body hair has started showing up again, becoming a symbol of a different kind of beauty. Body hair positivity has taken over social media, fashion and celebrity culture, finding an especially receptive audience among Gen Z, which is questioning many of the aesthetic rules inherited from previous generations and seems far less interested in the idea that every inch of skin needs to be controlled, polished and optimized. Is this a positive change? Yes. But there is one small problem. Even rejecting the standard can become a standard. If you do not shave because you are a feminist, great. If you do not shave because you want to escape the male gaze, great. If you do not shave because you want to show your natural body, even better. But what if you simply do not shave because you cannot be bothered? That should work too. Just as it should be perfectly legitimate to keep wanting smooth legs. Every answer should be valid. Even the least Instagrammable one. Freedom cannot mean replacing one diktat with its exact opposite. There should be no such thing as the “right” woman because she shaves, just as there should be no such thing as the “right” woman because she does not.

Phoebe Bridgers does not have to represent anyone

For the photocall of Primetime at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, Phoebe Bridgers wore an extremely feminine look, constructed down to the smallest detail, but left something visible that traditional beauty rules would have expected to disappear: hairy legs. Not perfectly smooth, not polished, not corrected down to the last follicle. Legs with hair. Before her, there was Julia Roberts, who accidentally showed her unshaved armpits at the 1999 premiere of Notting Hill and found herself at the center of one of the era’s biggest little beauty scandals. Almost thirty years later, we are still commenting on the body hair of a famous woman while she wears an elegant dress. The only difference is that now, instead of being scandalized, we celebrate the celebrity who did not shave as if she had just taken down the patriarchy with a razor left in a drawer. Maybe, though, real progress would be to stop asking every natural female body (or not) to represent something. Phoebe Bridgers can be a feminist, a musician, an actress, a celebrity or simply a person who did not shave that day. Her legs are not a manifesto, an accessory or a new beauty routine. They are two legs. With some hair. And, frankly, it would be nice if they could be just that.