'I'm a hairy woman and trolls criticise my armpits - but I make £17k a month'

11 March 2024 , 10:03

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Fenella Fox rakes in cash from selling pictures of her hairy armpits (Image: instagram/@fenellascorner)

Unrealistic beauty standards state that we should be waxing off almost every hair on our bodies - but this woman is telling ladies everywhere to embrace our natural beauty.

Fenella Fox decided to ditch the razor and stop shaving her armpits around six years ago when she grew tired of traditional beauty standards and realised there weren't many models uploading images to social media that showed off their body hair. The 30-year-old woman, from Worcester, took it upon herself to buck the trend and started sharing snaps of herself with her hairy armpits on display and soon found she could make money by selling the pictures she took - and she now makes a staggering £17,000 every month.

Fenella wants to empower other women to embrace their body hair (Instagram/fenellascorner)

She decided to ditch the razor six years ago and has never looked back (instagram/@fenellascorner)

Fenella now encourages other women who want to embrace their natural look to do the same and insists that the response she gets on her Instagram - where she has over 136,000 followers - from women is now largely positive. She said: "I decided to grow out my body hair and share it with everyone online. I showcased my body at tourist hotspots and under waterfalls. Before long my posts went viral - with a lot of people relating to my honesty. Instead of my inbox being flooded with messages from men, I had women thanking me."

While her lucrative career has seen her travel the world and live in luxury, it hasn't all been easy, and Fenella admitted she has also been viciously trolled online for the way she looks. Cruel commenters have told her that her armpits make them want to "puke", and in the early days of her career, the reaction to her posts was "mostly negative".

"There weren't many women online showing their natural pit hair so it shocked and angered people," she explained to Femail, "I was going against the 'norm' and I think a lot of people (especially men) felt threatened by this."

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The negativity she has faced also took a toll on Fenella's mental and physical health. She set herself a gruelling schedule that involved filming content and responding to messages for up to 14 hours every day, resulting in her experiencing "waves of dizziness" that were eventually diagnosed as vestibular migraines.

She has since changed her schedule to make sure she puts her health first, and although she still posts content regularly, she has "drastically reduced" her screen time. Now, Fenella feels much happier and healthier, and can focus her efforts on making body hair "more socially acceptable".

She said: "By choosing pictures where my pits are on display, I like to think I'm making body hair more socially acceptable one step at a time."

Zahna Eklund