An illustrator was left rolling her eyes due to the “controversy” her latest drawing generated, simply for featuring female body hair.
Tyler Feder posted the self-portrait on Instagram last week, which showed herself with unshaven legs and armpits.
Tyler, who regularly shares body-positive posts, captioned the image: “Thankful for my softness because it makes me human.”
But while the image received more than 2,700 likes, some labelled it “disgusting”.
On Monday, Tyler tweeted screen shots of some of the comments her illustration received, which included one-word replies such as “disgusting” and “gross”.
Several people left hateful comments around the inclusion of body hair in the illustration, with one Instagram user saying: “What girl has hairy ass legs, that shit is nasty. ”
Others focussed on the body shape of Tyler’s self-portrait, with one person saying: “Don’t be proud of being fat.”
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Tyler said she’s grown “pretty numb” to the comments her artwork receives as this happens fairly regularly.
“At the beginning, though, I felt so angry and hurt that my peaceful, personal art brought out such vitriol in strangers,” she said.
She also believes the comments offer a glimpse into how society feels about female body hair.
“Even commercials for razors and shaving cream show women shaving an already hairless leg, so I think it’s safe to say that female hair is viewed by our society as ugly, gross, and wrong - and that negativity grows exponentially when the woman is a member of any other marginalised communities,” she said.
“There’s also this perplexing notion that female body hair is ‘unhygienic’, as if it’s impossible to wash a body that has hair on it.
“I would much rather have female body hair viewed the same as male body hair. It’s just hair! Some people have more, some people have less, and it’s not a big deal either way.”
Thankfully, Tyler hasn’t let the haters get her down.
She later tweeted joking that she’d like to throw a pie at her critics, adding: “I do get a kick out of how worked up people get by an innocuous doodle.”
Sadly, Tyler is far from the first woman to receive hateful messages after posting photos showing body hair online.
Last year philosophy student Laura De, from Belgium, spoke out after being trolled incessantly on social media for a photo exposing her armpit hair.
Some said she looked like she had “tarantulas” under her arms, while others called her horrific names like “slut”.
Laura later posted a second photo of her hairless armpits, saying: “Sometimes I shave, sometimes not, the important thing is that it’s my choice.”
Amen to that.