Today on the podcast I speak to to Alice Draper.

Alice is a freelance writer and editor currently based in Nottingham Road, KwaZulu-Natal.

She finished studying a Bachelor of Journalism at Rhodes University in 2019 and has had the fun job of trying to cultivate a career during a global pandemic. Right now, most of her time is spent on copywriting work with a few editing projects. She's also trying to invest more of her energy into writing for publication.

Alice has always been a feminist. Her early primary school creative writing pieces reimagine fairy tales where the princess chooses to save herself without having an arguably toxic prince in the picture. Alice's writing can also be found in a few places like HelloGiggles, The Tempest, GroundUp, The Daily Maverick and elsewhere.

Today we’ll be talking about the piece she wrote for Living While Feminist – called, Shaving. It’s about body hair and deciding what to with it. In it she says:

“Reflecting has made me wonder how much of the decision to remove body hair was mine. I thought I was making an active choice, and at a physical level, I was.

… My realm of information (consisting of the media, friends, teachers and strangers) all told me I should remove my body hair. This wasn’t something to talk about and contest. It just was. But, as I got older my thoughts about the practice started to shift … one day I hope to have enough self-esteem to love my body as it is. Hairy and all.”

We talk about the male gaze, what it means to defy it, the many benefits of having an orthodox feminist mother, and the steps on a feminist journey. Welcome Alice.