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Influencer puts MASCARA on her 'moustache' – hitting back at trolls who call her 'disgusting'

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An influencer has hit back at trolls who called her facial hair “disgusting” after she covered the hair above her mouth in mascara in a bid to challenge beauty standards and celebrate her “gender-neutral moustache”.

Joanna Kenny, 32, from the Lake District, was told her partner doesn’t love her and that she was “masculine” and “dirty” for wearing mascara on her top lip hairs.

The skincare expert first started sharing clips of herself on Instagram to promote body positivity in January 2020 when she decided to go foundation free.

After feeling “liberated” by going barefaced, Joanna began to explore the other ways in which she’d felt “shamed” by society – sharing pictures celebrating her belly rolls and facial hair.

But while she grew a fanbase of nearly 100,000 followers, Joanna has been met with a huge amount of hate.

A clip of her highlighting her facial hair in November was viewed 1.1 million times on TikTok proved to be “very controversial” – with one troll even saying she looks like her dad.

“The picture went viral which was a bittersweet moment as the controversy surrounding that initial post was crazy,” said Joanna, an aesthetician.

“It felt like a worldwide debate on my moustache.

“Some people misinterpreted it as attention seeking or trying to set a new trend but the point was to start a conversation about gender inequality surrounding hair.

“Whenever I talk about this, I can’t quite believe I need to normalize body hair in 2021.

“I dedicated the first post to my friends with darker hair than me who have suffered bullying because of their visible hair, but I want women everywhere to know that visible hair is still feminine.”

Joanna believes that her videos and photos of her highlighted moustache receive such a backlash because “visible hair has a shock value as it is hidden from view in both real life and the media”.

She said: “For anyone to have an adverse reaction about something that is entirely human and visible on other genders just demonstrates how needed this conversation is.

“The shame associated with body hair results in women especially going to great lengths to painfully or permanently remove it.

“I’m often criticised as being unhygienic for having visible body and facial hair, and once I would have probably agreed because that’s what I’ve been taught growing up too.

“Since I decided not to remove my hair, I realised I’d been removing it to make other people feel more comfortable viewing my body, not to make me feel comfortable.”

But Joanna’s Instagram account has also had thousands of positive comments, with fans praising her for her confidence in promoting gender-neutral body hair.

Joanna said: “I’ve had PCOS sufferers and people from the transgender community reach out to say how much they needed to see it on social media.

“I’ve had other women who are naturally hairy reach out to tell me that they no longer stress about removing it in the same way they used to.

“And while I’ve had an increase of trolls, I’ve also had an increase of men contacting me because hairy women are their type!”

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