Amandla Stenberg Showed Off Their Underarm Hair on the Red Carpet

Amandla Stenberg has always been upfront about where they stand on beauty standards: In September, they wrote an essay about their relationship with their hair and how it tied into different iterations of their identity, including their blackness, sexuality, and gender.

When it finally came down to shaving it off for a role, however, they found it liberating: "Shaving my head was wild. I felt a sense of complete neutrality. It was so freeing. This summer I came out as gay, and I must say, having no hair made me feel even more comfortable with my gender and sexuality," Stenberg wrote. On Saturday night, they played around with another beauty standard — the one that dictates that women shave their body hair — by pairing underarm hair with Valentino.

On Saturday, Stenberg walked the red carpet at the European premiere of The Hate U Give, debuting as part of the 62nd BFI London Film Festival. They wore a gorgeous deep-plunge Valentino gown that revealed their underarm hair — later posting a photo to Instagram captioned "#drama #armpit".

Stenberg has never been known to go for the pastel-colored gowns other stars wear to events — instead, as Marley Dias wrote for Glamour recently, they seem to prefer clothing that makes a statement, like "burnt-orange suits and sleek dresses."

On Saturday, however, they let the black, classically beautiful dress take a backseat, using it to casually highlight their underarm hear instead — and letting that be the low-key statement for the night. It's like they told Glamour in a recent interview: "I want to express myself as authentically as I can."

A few other Gen Z celebs have stepped out sans shave recently, too: Paris Jackson hit the 2017 VMAs red carpet in similar form…

….and Bella Thorne is another actor who's chosen to show off her underarm hair for public appearances.

To shave or not to shave, that is the question as we dash through a shower every morning — but luckily, it's one where there's no "correct" answer.

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