Cindy wrote in asking for some advice...

[CProductions Chris]

On October 9, 2007, a woman named Cindy used the contact form at
www.girlswithhairyarms.net to ask for some advice. Unfortunately she
did not spell her email address correctly and I was never able to get
back to her.

Surreal, would you mind taking a stab at what she wrote in? Hopefully
some day your reply will find her!

-Chris

*** Original Message is as follows: ***

My granddaughter is six and in the first grade. She has very hairy
arms. I am having lots of problems with her wanting to attend school,
because she says that the kids stare at her during class. I have tried
lots of positive talks with her about how special she is and she is
very pretty. Do you have any suggestions of what I can do or where I
can get additional information on how to deal with this?
Cindy

[Iam.Surr...@gmail.com]

Hopefully this posts - first time replying to a message in this
column!! :)

Hi Cindy,

Thanks for writing in about your granddaughter.
I suppose the first thing I can say right away is that I COMPLETELY
understand how she feels!!

For the longest time, it was such a horrifying experience for me,
going to school and having people stare at the hair on my arms. As I
am of West Indian descent, my hair grows very dark black and is
therefore much more noticeable than other hair.

It gradually became MY THING to never, ever wear short sleeves.

This of course, was very hard on me but what your granddaughter must
realize is that, the hair on her arms is NOT a bad thing at all. It
took me a very long time to realize it but, how can it be something
bad when we are all meant to be different? People like very different
things from everyone else.

Just as some people prefer blondes and brunettes, there are people who
like and dislike hairy arms.

Because your granddaughter is so young, I can imagine what a difficult
time you must have, trying to explain things to her in this way -
probably she does not understand.
I think you are already doing a very good thing by trying to convince
her that she is just different, and that different can be very very
special, not necessarily WRONG or bad.

Once again, it took quite awhile before I could realize this for
myself but now that i have, I really can't stress it enough, how
wonderful it is to be different from the others.
Society has made it so that women need to be hairless in order to be
attractive. This society does not rule the entire world's population,
however and I have come to know many people who LOVE the fact that my
arms are hairy and that I don't try to remove it constantly now.

Maybe even showing her some other girls with hairy arms could help as
well; I know that always helped me to feel less isolated, growing up.
You initially wrote in to GirlsWithHairyArms.com, correct? Perhaps
this would be a good site to even show your granddaughter so that she
can see that there are some very incredibly beautiful girls around who
also have hairy arms like her.

Hope this helps you out, Cindy!
Take care and all the best to you and your no doubt beautiful
granddaughter :)

`Surreal

On Jan 1, 10:34 pm, CProductions Chris <CProducti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On October 9, 2007, a woman named Cindy used the contact form atwww.girlswithhairyarms.netto ask for some advice.  Unfortunately she