When Montreal artist Esther Calixte-Béa, better known online as Queen Esie, posted a self-portrait in a lavender bralette three years ago, she expected a trickle of likes. Instead, the image—a clear shot of the dark chest hair she had once shaved in secret—blew up overnight and launched what she now calls the Lavender Project: an ongoing series of photos and videos that refuse to treat body hair as a flaw.
For Esie the activism is personal. Growing up in a Haitian-Ivorian household, she tried every depilatory cream and painful wax recommended by beauty magazines, convinced that smooth skin equaled femininity. The routine ended when she realised the real shame came not from hair itself but from hiding it. Today her TikTok feed shows close-ups of curls peeking through summer dresses, Q&As about hormonal hirsutism, and pep talks for teenagers terrified of gym-class locker rooms. One clip captioned “A WOMAN with Chest Hair ☀️” has clocked more than two million views, turning the phrase into a body-positivity rallying cry.
Esie’s message is blunt: if society celebrates bearded men as rugged, it can learn to admire chest-haired women as radiant. She reminds followers that female body hair was common until early-20th-century razor ads invented a problem to sell a cure. Her history lessons—delivered while she sews hand-dyed crop tops for her art shows—connect modern marketing to centuries-old policing of femmes, queers, and Black bodies.
The work resonates far beyond social media. Dermatologists invite her to speak about follicle diversity; fashion brands commission runway pieces that leave sternums proudly unshaven. Yet she still fields daily DMs calling her “lazy” or “unhygienic.” Esie replies with a grin and a scientific reference about sebum or thermoregulation, then saves the nastiest comments for future art installations—proof, she says, that ugliness lives in the eye, not the hair.
Ultimately, Queen Esie isn’t asking everyone to toss their razors. She’s asking why one body’s fuzz is called freedom while another’s is labelled failure—and what we might discover about joy, gender, and self-worth once the stubble settles.
