Body hair is a big issue especially for those who have it. Some cultures adore body hair on women and men, others deny that women actually grow body hair on their arms, legs, face, and even chest. Muslims have a haram and halal guide to body hair, and Jewish women remove theirs every month before they go to the mikva when relations with their husband can resume.

Middle Eastern women can be hairy and those not wanting it use threading and sugar wax or sugaring to remove it. Removing hair, as men who shave daily, know, is a big hassle. Some get it removed permanently but that could be a big mistake as Januhairy and a new body hair trend is coming back stronger than Brooke Shield’s eyebrows in the 80s.

What’s a woman to do? Like Movember when men started growing moustaches for a cause, a new movement called Januhairy is encouraging women to stop removing their body hair. Look at Cypriot-American model Sophia Hadjipanteli and her unibrow. And the TikToker Unibrow Girl. Will you join the movement?

If you look to Takijistan a woman’s beauty is measured by the size of eyebrows. Traditional Tajikistan songs including Bukaran songs by Jewish Tajikis extol women and their large eyebrows. Tajikistan women paint their eyebrows a la Frida Kahlo to appear more attractive.

Egyptians are credited with inventing sugaring, believed to predate shaving. It’s similar to waxing, but uses a sugar-syrup paste that gets spread onto skin. When the mixture cools, it’s quickly peeled off, yanking hair out at the roots. You can eat the sweet pre-product if you use our recipe.

But why bother shaving? Women leading the Januhairy movement like Queen Esie believe that body hair can help a woman reclaim her body and redefine what is beautiful.

She offers some tips, “Most women have shaved and removed their body hair all their life that they don’t know what they look like natural, and feel shame when they body hair slowly starts growing back. If you want to stop be afraid or ashamed of your body hair and slowly start embracing it, here are a few tips:

Tip 1: Accept that you’re a hairy woman & that’s ok ?
Tip 2: Wear clothes that reveal your body hair in the comfort of your home?
Tip 3: Compliment your hairy body in the mirror ☀️
Tip 4: Let your body hair grow during the winter

“Once you get use to seeing body hair on your body you will slowly stop feeling shame.”

If you lived past the 90s and notice some women have bald eyebrows, that’s because women over-removed their eyebrows and they never grew back. Some women, already back then and it’s always been more common in Europe, have stopped removing armpit hair, leg hair, nipple hair and all hair down there.

Say no to a Brazil body wax

What is a Brazilian wax? In a Brazilian wax common in the west pubic hair is removed from around the external genitals, between the upper thighs, and around the anus. Some women can choose to remove all hair in the area or leave a small strip of hair in the front.

For the last 15 years or the Brazil body wax has made it common for women to remove their pubic hair as though they are pre-pubescent women. The Januhairy movement is encouraging women to keep all their growth, personal and down their intact and to embrace one’s body as it is: hairy and beautiful. It starts with a few women but if women of the world unite, you can stop shaving forever. The other option: get married and save yourself the hassle.

“Female body hair challenges not only the world’s status quo on a superficial, visual level but also our deeper stigmas and beliefs surrounding female pleasure and sex,” says Caley Draws, who discusses sex and hair.

Thinking about growing out your hair?

Follow the Januhairy movement.

Thinking, no way, help me out. I got to this page for the wrong reasons: Start here with a simple sugar wax DIY recipe.

The post Grow a unibrow for Januhairy and embrace your body hair appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s cold in Jordan for 6 months of the year, extreme weather threw can even throw an icy blanket over my neighbors in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. How to stay warm today? Knit a beard. Look local.

Middle Eastern men who follow strict Jewish and Muslim teachings have built-in winter defenses in the form of thick facial hair. I can’t grow a beard (despite those mustaches on my Italian great-aunts), but I can fake it. I’ll show you how too.

Green Prophet archives hold a brilliant story on a handknit sunnah beard. You can buy one online at prices hovering around $35, not bad for a handmade item, but I need a face-warmer now. So I concocted a recipe to make my own.  Give it a try?

You can pick up quick knitting skills from YouTube instructional videos. Knock one of these out in a weekend.

It’ll take a few balls of yarn and a day’s worth of clicking.  Or fast forward to finished product by only making the beard: attach it to a purchased hat and you’ll be looking like a member of the Jordanian ski team in under an hour. If you’re sort-of local to Jordan, I can make one for you.

A beard is sunnah. What does that mean?

Keeping a beard is standard practice according to the “sunnah” in Islam.  That Arabic term generally refers to ways of the prophet Mohammad: he was fully bearded.  Muslim men are encouraged to grow beards when reaching adulthood as a symbol of manhood, purity and maturity.

The Zohar, one of the primary sources of Kabbalah (a mystical aspect of Judaism), also attributes holiness to the beard.  Beard hairs symbolize channels of subconscious holy energy that flow into the human soul from the Divine.  Most Hasidim don’t even trim their beards, and during religious periods such as Passover, Sukkot, the Counting of the Omer and the Three Weeks, traditional Jewish men commonly refrain from shaving. Oh and remember Samson? All of his powers came from his long hair. Hair cut – powers gone.

Parking religion aside, beards make for a provocative scientific subject.

Charles Darwin offered an evolutionary explanation for the furry face in his book The Descent of Man, which hypothesized that the sexual selection process may have led to beards’ popularity. Modern biologists have reaffirmed the anthropological role of beards in human mating, concluding that there’s evidence that females find bearded mates more attractive than clean-shaven alternatives.

Throughout history, facial forestation has been viewed as a sign of wisdom, manliness, and high social status.  But beards also indicate eccentricity, dirtiness and low social rank.

Surveys show modern men love them in direct proportion to women hating them.

Environmentalists now widely accept that beard-growing is “green”.

The jury may be out as to whether real beards turn up the romantic heat, but the knitted types will absolutely let you lower your thermostats.

The post Knit Your Own Sustainable Beard appeared first on Green Prophet.

Women’s beauty standards change just like our taste in wallpaper. Some years one thing is in, another few years and bell bottoms have replaced skinny jeans. Same with beauty standards all over the world. If you know anyone from the areas of Tajikistan or Uzbekistan the people of today sing songs about the beauty of a woman’s thick black eyebrows.

Once upon a time in Iran, which was then known as Persia, women with light mustaches were considered beautiful. Here are some photographs from a period in history –– a time when a prince had 84 wives, and some of them had mustaches.

Nasir al-Din Shah and the Subtle Grace of the Persian Mustache

In the opulent courts of Qajar Persia Nasir al-Din Shah reigned as both a monarch and a connoisseur of beauty. Among his 84 wives, one stood above the rest: Anis al-Dawla, the Shah’s confidante and his favorite. Her charm was unmatched, but it wasn’t just her wit or elegance that captivated him—it was her adherence to a beauty ideal that, by today’s standards, might seem unconventional. Anis al-Dawla, like many women in the Shah’s harem, was said to have a delicate mustache, a feature celebrated as a mark of feminine allure in Persian culture.

Related: Use sugaring to remove your hair the Persian way

Born in 1842 she was the daughter of an impoverished shepherd from Amamme village in Lavāsān, northeast of Tehran, and was employed as a maidservant to Jeyrān, the wife of the Shah, in the Qajar harem in 1859. She became the favorite of the shah after Jeyrān’s death in 1860.

Anis was the only wife to take meals with Nāṣer-al-dīn, a unique privilege, and to join him regularly at bedtime after he received visits from other wives. She was also the one with the mind: to openly criticize him and organise political opposition to government policies that she disagreed with. The Shah granted the Shahrastanak Palace to her.

To the Western eye, this strange mustache aesthetic might appear strange. But in 19th-century Persia, where the natural world intertwined with art and philosophy, the light mustache held profound symbolism.

Persian poets, many who were Sufi, and whose words shaped the cultural landscape, compared this feature to a shadow upon the moon—a subtle enhancement that amplified, rather than diminished, its radiance. A line from the great Hafez captures this sentiment perfectly:

“Her lip, adorned with a shadow’s trace,
Holds a sweetness time cannot erase.”

Nasir al-Din Shah’s court was a world where beauty transcended mere physicality. The fine mustache represented vitality, refinement, and balance. Anis al-Dawla embodied this ideal. Her confident demeanor and understated grace left an indelible mark on the Shah and the empire.

Portraits from the era reveal women with bold features: expressive eyes, arched brows, and, often, faintly shadowed upper lips.

Anis al-Dawla, exemplified a harmony of qualities—strength tempered with softness, confidence paired with humility. The light mustache, far from being an imperfection, was a testament to their connection with the divine balance of nature.

Some sources suggest that the Shah forced the women in his harem to gain weight and did not allow them to shave their moustaches. Eventually Iranian women tried to look like the European women who began to adorn the dreams of Iranian men. Moustaches were shaved, eyebrows were thinned and women tried to lose weight.

Today, as global beauty standards often lean toward botox and homogenization of certain western beauty standards, the story of Nasir al-Din Shah and Anis al-Dawla invites us to reconsider our perceptions. That said, are you ready for Januhairy?

The post The Shah’s Harem and the Subtle Grace of the Persian Mustache appeared first on Green Prophet.