You’ll be surprised, we’re sure, to find out the headline isn’t from 1969. And the deja vu doesn’t stop there. The state of what passes for journalism in 2022 is an unironic article on brave and stunning women who don’t shave.

Really. In the Wall Street Journal, of all places, headlined “Armpit Hair Is Back, Whether You Like It or Not”.

OOooOOOooo!! Whether we “like it or not!” Gauntlet thrown, you oppressors! We are women, hear us roar … well, accept when we’re not.

Shouldn’t armpit hair for all genders—embraced by celebrities, espoused by laissez-faire hippies since the 1960s—be a non-issue by now? And yet, it still has the power to raise eyebrows, even as it enters the zeitgeist again.

Vogue’s August cover, featuring Emma Corrin of “The Crown,” is its first to feature a nonbinary person, and likely its first to show armpit hair. The actor, who uses they/them pronouns, joins a growing number of female and nonbinary people that flaunt armpit hair.

Oh.dear. Vogue is putting a “non-binary” actress on the cover showing one hairy pit and WSJ’s scribbler is just jonesing for the hoi polloi to take to their fainting couches because it’s so transgressive or something.

Excuse me, I just rolled my eyes so hard I gave myself a headache. The sprint of amoral corporate America to virtue-signal whatever cause-du-jour is ascendent is pretty much SOP. But this idea that all history began with whatever year the Millennial “journalist” started grade school has grown tiresome. Coupled with the usual star-bellied sneetch approach to the great unwashed, this relentless Othering is concerning.

Armpit hair is increasingly trickling down to the masses, as well. Growing up in rural, conservative North Carolina, Jada Mackenzie Travis did not know that refusing to shave was an option.

Say, what? I’ll take things that never happened for $200, Alex, because last I looked, there were no Hairy Pit Police in :::gasp::: conservative communities hunting down hairy transgressors to administer public flogging shaving.

We’ve gone from the usual coastal-journalist “Gorillas in the Mist” approach to flat out depicting any area outside the Left-run urban centers as the Republic of Gilead.

A trip to New York that exposed her to different gender expressions inspired her to grow her armpit hair out, and now she sees it as a way to live more authentically.

That word “authentically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting when Ms. Jada is happy to follow the latest fashion trend. Because shaving has been little more than fashion du jour for both women and men.

And the human capacity for self-decoration is endless — whether coupled with health (the ancient Egyptians shaved their whole bodies because of one word: lice) or fashion or politics. There is nothing new under the sun.

But tell that to these youngsters who can’t even look back 50 years.

So, if some shallow starlet wants to pimp her pits for a fashion cover, knock yourself out, sweety. Like face piercings, face tattoos and trendy pronouns, those choices send a message to us normies — akin to the red hourglass on a black widow spider.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

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