I was born hairy, “a little monkey” according to my mother, may she rest in peace. The way she told it, I burst onto the scene screaming with horror, sporting impressively thick black hair on my head and shoulders. Growing from my shoulders. Soon enough, like the blue eyes I was born with, my wooly “epaulets” disappeared and by the time I reached my first birthday I was drawing the attention of casting agents. Per my stroller-pushing mother’s account, all were turned away, “vultures” who elevated her to protector in the story. “You were so beautiful,” she said.
Whatever. This isn’t another story about my mother per se. She used to be my primary subject but I’m trying to move on, though I do need to add two more things I learned from her as a kid. One was that she’d hoped to have a son the second time around. The other was that this hoped-for-boy’s given name would have been David Lee Tanney. Instead she got me, Katherine Leigh, who turned out to be the only of her three daughters—she never got that son she wanted—to grow as tall as a man, over six feet by the time I started college. No one had to look far for the reason. My father stood 6’4”, yet my sisters, one younger, one older, both stopped at 5’6”, which was the average height for a female in those days.
Around the time I entered fifth or sixth grade, I was embarrassed by the dark hair of my forearms, legs, and sacrum, not to mention a vertical line of raven-colored hair centered neatly between belly button and pelvis on my alabaster skin. I had to beg my mother to let me shave my legs, and was forbidden. Too young, she insisted, being too old to care about the times I was living in. (See nonexistent section about sanitary pads and belts being my introduction to menstruation because my mother knew nothing about the existence of tampons or else wanted to preserve the integrity of my hymen.) Sadly, the Jolene creme bleach I was permitted to use on the fine dark hairs above my upper lip wasn’t strong enough to lighten any of my much more worrying “problem areas.” We lived in Southern California, in year-round bikini weather.
This is not an essay about body hair or LA or even my body image growing up but they are relevant to all the questions at the heart of this story, which concerns the hormone testosterone. And, because it’s Sunday, I’m keeping it short, teasing you so you’ll come back Wednesday for much more. This one’s going to include the findings of some recent research.
How mysterious...