HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: 'My daughter asked me why she has hair on her legs and I don't.'

“You have hair on your legs and I don’t, darling, because you are still at an age where you are not yet expected to conform to society’s long-held beauty standards.

“You are, as yet, ignorant of the judgement and ridicule that you’ll attract if you decide to buck accepted beauty norms.

“You don’t know yet that the natural state of your body is considered disgusting and gross, and that if you don’t take steps to alter and tame it, you will be considered a peculiar rebel, worthy of note.

“You are not yet aware that our culture considers the naturally hairy state of a man’s body attractive and manly, but the naturally state of a woman’s body smelly and unhygienic.

“But don’t worry, you have all that to look forward to. You go girl, etc.”

Of course I didn’t say that.

What I actually said was this: "Oh, I just like to shave my legs. Maybe you'll shave yours one day." And we went back to watching the telly.

But it bothered me. It bothered me because every day, my daughter's eyes are on me, watching for clues about how to be a woman. She's gathering data at all times. She's like a spy for the future.

And people, that's a lot of pressure. Because, I don't know about you, but I don't have good reasons for many of  the 'womanly' things that I do.

"Why do you wear make-up?" Is another question I haven't worked out the 'right' answer to.

"Why do you wear high heels?" Yet another.

"Why are you standing at the fridge eating pickles out of a jar?" But I digress.

This stuff is basic. How to handle these questions should be taught in pre-natal classes, right alongside how to find the exact piece of teeny-tiny Lego your kid is tearfully demanding in a bucketful of identical bumpy bits. And how to deal with the inevitable, 'What happens after we die?', which is a question only ever asked while a parent is driving a car.

Yes, I could go into the fact that people have tried all kinds of ways to remove their body hair since ye olde caveman days, when early humans would shave with a sharp stone so that their hair could not be grabbed by an enemy in battle.

Or Roman times, when women and men would rub at their leg hair with bits of volcanic glass.

Or, I could talk about the fact that one of the reasons ordinary working-class western women started shaving their legs was because, during World War II, stockings were hard to come by and skirts had got shorter and somewhere a group of guys had decided that smooth legs would really help the war effort.

I could have told her about an excellent housemate I once had who didn't give a f- about her thick, dark body hair and, in fact, on special occasions would shave festive patterns into her leg-hair in lieu of leggings.

But I didn't.

I did ask for help though, via This Glorious Mess, the excellent podcast about family life that I co-host with Andrew Daddo. He told a slightly disturbing story about the amount of hair on display in a recently-sighted vintage collection of Playboys, but I got some excellent tips from listeners, like:

Robyn, who also says: "When the kids asked about make-up (seeing me putting it on) I told them it was a type of decoration that grown-ups choose to have or not. I have extrapolated that to cover hair as well.  Men get to decorate their faces with beards if they want and we can choose how much or little hair to have on our bits. You get it when you grow up and get to choose."

Speaking of curious little ones and body hair, you can listen to this segment on This Glorious Mess right over here: