Kerala: Meet the Indian woman who flaunts her moustache

An Indian native woman who includes a moustache has received both appreciation and derision from people online. But the girl says she is unfazed by all the interest around her facial hair.

“I love my moustache, ” Shyja, 35, declares in her WhatsApp status area, below a photo of herself.

She is frequently asked – by people who see the girl photos on Facebook or meet her in person – why she sports a moustache.

“All I can say is that I just like it. A lot, ” the girl says.

Shyja, exactly who uses only one title, lives in Kannur district in the southern condition of Kerala. Like many women, she had wisps of hair on your face above her lip for years.

While she would regularly get her eyebrows threaded, Shyja says the lady never felt the necessity to remove the hair above her upper lip.

About five years ago, this began to thicken into a visible moustache and also a delighted Shyja made a decision to keep it.

“I aint able to imagine living without having it now. Once the Covid pandemic began, I disliked within the mask all the time since it covered my face, ” she says.

Many people who noticed her urged the girl to get rid of her moustache but Shyja declined.

“I’ve never ever felt that I am not beautiful since I have this or that it’s something We shouldn’t have. inch

Women are often informed that facial hair is undesirable and that they need to pay to have this removed – or tweaked into shape — regularly. Hair elimination products are a multi-billion dollar industry along with creams, wax pieces, razors and epilators aimed at women who can afford to pay for all of them.

But in recent years, many women have been selecting to go against the norm by accepting and even taking pride within their facial hair.

In 2016, body positivity campaigner Harnaam Kaur became the youngest lady in the world to have a complete beard, according to the Guinness Planet Records . In interviews, she has often spoken about how receiving her facial hair has been an important part of learning to love herself in the face of bullying.

For Shyja, sporting a moustache basically about making a declaration, it’s just element of who she is.

“I just do what I like. If I had two lifestyles, maybe I’d live one for others, ” she says.

Some of this attitude originates from having battled health issues for years. Shyja has gone through six surgeries over a decade : one was to eliminate a lump within her breast, an additional was to remove cysts in her ovary. Her last surgery was a hysterectomy five years ago.

“Each period I came out of surgical treatment, I would hope which i never had to return into an operation theatre again, ” the lady says.

Overcoming several health crises just strengthened Shyja’s belief that she ought to live her existence in a way that makes her happy.

Shyja says she was a shy child while we were young. Women in her village would hardly be seen outside the home after 6pm at night.

Though Kerala is one of India’s most progressive states, with high advancement indicators, patriarchal behaviour persist in most areas, and women are usually discouraged from traveling or living by yourself.

When she did marry and moved to the particular neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, Shyja says she loved discovering a new type of freedom.

“My hubby would go to work and return late. So I would sit outside the house in the evening, sometimes I’d stroll to the store by itself at night if I required something. No one cared. As I learnt to perform things on my own, it built my self-confidence, ” she says, adding that she actually is trying to pass on this particular attitude to her teenage daughter.

Shyja’s family and friends have been encouraging of her moustache. Her daughter often tells her this looks good on her.

But Shyja states she’s heard all sorts of remarks from folks who see her over the streets.

“People interesting of me saying, ‘it’s men who have moustaches, why might a woman have one? ‘” she says.

Over the years, she has already been featured in local media reports many times. Recently, she states, she saw various mocking comments with an article on her discussed by a local information outlet on Facebook.

One person asked precisely why she couldn’t have a blade to her moustache when it was clear that her eye brows had been threaded.

“But isn’t that about what I like – things to keep and what never to? ” she asks.

Shyja’s friends often furiously reply to these types of comments on Facebook, but she states it doesn’t bother her at all.

“In reality, sometimes I appearance them up to laugh at them. ”