Hairy legs, bare faces: how might women change the way they look once the pandemic is over?

Thanks to the pandemic, people are homebound, interacting less, Zooming more, and beauty routines and fashion choices have adapted to match

Some women are finding they do not miss their pre-Covid-19 routines, such as waxing, shaving their legs and make-up, while others can’t wait for their return

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People are at home more, interacting less, Zooming more – and beauty routines and fashion choices for women have adapted to match. Some women say they won’t return to their old routines, while for others, a lot of time Zooming has made them book in for some cosmetic surgery. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:15pm, 31 Jan 2021Updated: 4:30pm, 4 Feb 2021

Women look a bit different than when the pandemic began. Loungewear for skirts, slippers for heels, bare faces for painted ones. Some of us are hairier, too.

Andrea DeWerd, 33, of New York, says: “I’m never wearing make-up or blow drying my hair for work again.” Fellow New Yorker Julia Liss, 27, vows she’s “done wearing heels”. Marie Garmon, 41, in Florida, says: “I went from shaving my legs every few days … to not shaving at all since April”.

We heard from dozens of women who shared that, despite the pandemic’s lockdowns, social restrictions and mask mandates, the relaxed beauty standards that have accompanied their retreat from public life have been “liberating”.

“If there’s one thing good that came from this Covid-19 mess, it’s that I was able to find myself,” Garmon said. “To hell with all of it … who are we really doing all of this for? Not myself, because I hate that routine.”

Andrea DeWerd says she is “never wearing make-up” again.

If the pandemic has offered women any reprieve, it may be from societal expectations around appearance. More are homebound, interacting less, Zooming more, and beauty routines and fashion choices have adapted in kind.

When the pandemic sharpened the divide between our public lives and our private selves, it gave women space to examine what they do to their bodies and why. The question is, will any of these relaxed norms stick?