This incredible artist shared how she is embracing her body hair and sharing artworks showcasing how women with body hair should be normalised.
Esther Calixte-Bea, better known as Queen Esie, had been an artist all of her life and incorporated her beliefs surrounding body hair into her art.
Esther, from Montreal, Canada, had painted women with body hair and even used physical body hair for her work which has now been featured in galleries.
The artist claimed her work had inspired other women to stop shaving and many gallery visitors praised her for her creations.
One of Esther’s infamous creations was her lavender dress which she shaped specifically to help show off her chest and armpit hair.
She said: “So a year before I graduated because that’s when I was starting to question why I was shaving, why I was why I was removing my body hair, and I was getting more body hair.
“Who was I doing this for? Do I actually hate my body hair?
“How can I talk about this taboo of female body hair in a way that I feel people will understand, especially also as someone who had Instagram, I was not an influencer at that time at Instagram.
Esther added: “I’m also an artist. So I was like, OK, let me create a self photography project where I can kind of like use images just like images have been used to propagate a specific idea of what beauty is.
“I’m going to use the same medium to show that female body hair can be beautiful.
“So, through the lavender project, I made this lavender dress, and I showed my chest hair for the first time.
“That’s when I started this discussion about femininity, femininity and female body hair.”
The reaction to Esther’s art has been positive with her claiming that many women are happy to see someone making art of body hair and feel empowered to grow their body hair out.
Esther explained: “I really want to show this freedom, this confidence and women that have been ashamed are now unashamed, embracing their body hair as part of who they are.
“I feel like in society when it comes to beauty, the world is always trying to tell us what’s beautiful and what’s not without taking into account that there’s several types of beauty and the world is diverse.”