Every now and then a woman in the public eye will be spotted with some underarm fuzz or a bit of hair on their legs, and a barrage of hateful comments will be unleashed by social media and the press. From Rachel McAdams and Emily Ratajkowski to Lil Miquela, models in Nike campaigns and people just trying to exist on the internet, no one is exempt. Not even being one of the most conventionally attractive women in the world, or a CGI robot influencer who doesn’t exist, will save you from the vomit emojis.

“It’s the most natural thing to grow hair. If people genuinely think that our natural state is worth the vomit emoji then that says a lot about how people view themselves and their natural state, which is extremely concerning,” says Munroe Bergdorf, the newly announced ambassador for Estrid, the razor and body care company. Counter-intuitively, over the last few years, it’s been razor brands that have been some of the most boundary-pushing in terms of representing feminine body hair in the media. Billie regularly showcases pubic hair and upper lip hair in its imagery, while Estrid has long featured women’s body hair in its campaigns.  

This taboo around body hair has deep roots tangled up in race (“women of certain ethnicities have more hair than others”) and the kind of beauty that is prioritised by society (“the infantile image of a smooth woman in pornography”), Bergdorf says. In Estrid’s new campaign, For Human Beauty, she stars alongside a cast including Florence H-Q and Sophia Hadjipanteli to represent and celebrate the diversity of body and facial hair, as well as the expansiveness of gender expression. 

Dazed spoke to Bergdorf about the campaign, the public obsession with celebrities’ bodies and the current media environment for the transgender community.

How important do you think campaigns like this, that celebrate inclusive beauty and all genders, are? Do you think it makes a difference?

Munroe Bergdorf: It definitely makes a big difference. I grew up in a time when the beauty industry was very much geared towards encouraging everyone to strive to be something that they could never be. So it was a never-ending quest for what was essentially a very narrow idea of beauty, usually cisgender, straight, white, thin, conventionally western beauty standards. 

And now we’re seeing much more gender variance; much more racial diversity; much more sexual expression; much more beauty in all kinds of shapes, sizes and shades. That can only be a good thing because no one should be made to feel like something that they can never be. 

In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of really great efforts around body positivity and inclusivity, but it also feels like the pressures around beauty standards are stronger than ever – do you feel that as well?

Munroe Bergdorf: I was watching Ariana Grande’s video the other day and it just kind of confirmed to me what I was already thinking. When I was a teenager, it was the tabloids who were being extremely toxic about people’s appearances and I think, in some ways, we have become the tabloids with TikTok. ‘Who’s on Ozempic? Who’s had buccal fat removal? Who needs buccal fat removal? Who has put on weight? Who is scary skinny? Who is bleaching their skin? Who’s on tanning injections? Who’s doing blackface? Who is too pale?’ It’s just never-ending. 

Of course, it’s important that we talk about the impact of beauty standards and things like weight loss injections, but we’re making it personal and it’s an endless commentary on how people look. It’s massively unhealthy for everybody, not just the people that are being talked about. I’ve done magazine covers where I’ve been bigger than I usually am and the backlash that I got from people, who saw it as an opportunity to bring me down a peg or two, was just wild. In my instance, these were anti-trans people who saw that as a way to be more transphobic, and I feel like we need to think about what are we really doing here by critiquing people's appearances. Are we doing it to make ourselves feel better? Or to push our own motives? Are we actually concerned?

I spoke to a psychology professor once about the ‘before and after’ Instagram accounts and he said when you look at these comparisons of other people – even if you feel good about yourself for a second – you start to look at your own body and your own features in that similar way. You turn that energy onto yourself. So it’s harming everyone to have this culture of ‘before and after’ and ‘who’s been photoshopped’.

Munroe Bergdorf: We can’t talk about bodily autonomy without talking about people’s rights to do with their bodies what they want – and that includes cosmetic surgery. I think there’s a big difference in lying about having surgery and just not disclosing. The idea that people are having surgical procedures to hoodwink people, or deceive people, is also a narrative that really damages trans women. So I think that people could take a leaf out of the trans people’s books in terms of how we view surgery – no one is going to be having surgery for anybody else. And if they are then people should have compassion for that, because that person obviously is going through something. 

A few years ago, you did the Qween’s Speech with Dazed. In it, you said, “in really difficult times, culture thrives”. I wondered if that was still something that you believed in, because right now it feels like we’re in extremely difficult times.

Munroe Bergdorf: Yeah! I think it’s something that I’ll always come back to because it’s massively true. Resistance forms culture. Subcultures are formed – and prevail, eventually – underneath oppressive circumstances. We’ve seen it before with the sexual revolution as a reaction to Puritan culture; the blues came out of slavery; we saw disco thrive underneath the HIV and Aids crisis, and LGBTQ rights come out of the backlash.

I feel like in a lot of ways the trans community is navigating a media environment similar to what gay men were navigating in the late 80s and early 90s, with regards to Section 28 and the moral panic, and the media hysteria around trans people in single-sex spaces. The way gay men were compared to paedophiles and sexual abusers, we’re seeing exactly the same thing happen, with trans women being framed as potential rapists and child abusers. 

‘The idea that people are having surgical procedures to hoodwink people, or deceive people, is a narrative that really damages trans women’ – Munroe Bergdorf

Every single time that our community makes significant gains, there’s going to be significant pushback. But that pushback is not rooted in truth or fairness, and equality always wins in the end – it will. I’m massively optimistic about that. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be fighting back against it because no battles are won with us putting our feet up. We should all be protesting against this dangerous ideology, and making sure that the transphobia that we’re seeing proliferate across the country doesn‘t become the sustained norm. What was the question? Did I answer it?

We’re seeing more and more people, year on year, attend Trans Pride. The way that the media and the way that the government function is not necessarily what the general public thinks. There’s a lot of division going on right now and obviously it’s having an impact, but I do feel that people are compassionate at their core. I think the way that we have seen the rights of women advance, the rights of ethnic minorities advance, the rights of queer people advance, the increasing number of people that are standing behind migrants and asylum seekers coming to this country – I do feel like at our core, we aren’t evil.

Your book came out in February – congratulations! How does it feel to have it out in the world?

Munroe Bergdorf: It feels really freeing. For a long time I wanted to draw a line under a lot of the chaos that’s happened in my personal life and career and be able to celebrate the good place that I’m in. It was nice to look at how far I’ve come personally with regards the memoir element, but also talk about my journey as a trans person across multiple lines of human identity from adolescence to sexuality, gender, love, race, and purpose. 

It was just a real honour to have this platform and be a voice for my community, because it’s not very often that we hear from trans people about what it means to be trans. We’re constantly hearing from cisgender people, who have a bone to pick with the community that’s often unfounded. I hope that it makes its way into many trans people’s hands who need it and people who could do with understanding the trans perspective from a trans person.

Do you have a message for anyone who sees this campaign and feels seen or represented for the first time?

Munroe Bergdorf: If you feel seen and represented by this campaign, then that’s job done. I think that’s incredible to see yourself in imagery that is aspirational, or even just inclusive. When I first saw imagery in campaigns, or on screen, it opened a possibility to me, not necessarily that I wanted to be that person but that I could do whatever I wanted to do. And I think it’s incredibly powerful, representation and visibility, because for a lot of people the world does feel very lonely without that. If you don’t see yourself in your immediate surroundings, then you want to see yourself in the media to help reaffirm who you are, that your presence matters, that you're not in it alone, there are people out there who share your identity. 

So if you feel seen by this campaign, then don’t stop demanding visibility and representation. And also be that representation for other people, be that visibility for other people, because it’s a chain reaction. I hope that other people carry that on and demand better representation, and more of it, if it’s something that you’re not seeing.

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