I have lots of stories (lots) about the patriarchy getting in my way (seriously Patriarchy, you make a better wall than a window). However! Today for you I have a story about unintentional subversion.

I am spending my summer with rotating groups of high school students. I generally like all of them, but last week I especially bonded with a girl I’ll call Lucy. She was creative and artsy and really hoping she could make the world a better place and sometimes she felt like she was the only one at her school who cared.

As someone who cares deeply it can be easy to feel isolated, but high school is especially rough because teenagers who might care later are distracted with teenagedom. I hope that spending time with me helped her see that she’s not a freak (or at least that there are lots of other freaks out there).

I was writing down names of peace activists for Lucy to research when she stopped me to ask what she warned might be a strange question:

“Do you not shave your legs?”

“Nope,” I answered. “I just don’t really want to.”

“You know what?” she said, “I don’t really want to either!”

We moved on to other topics and went about our days. The program ended, and we said our teary goodbyes right before she got on the bus. Her final words for me:

“This might sound weird, but I’m never going to shave my legs again!”

Not weird, Lucy, just utterly lovely.