The Bachelor alum Bekah Martinez defends going SEVEN years without shaving body hair

Daily Mail​

11 hours ago

The Bachelor #22 alum Bekah Martinez clapped back at a troll who said her fiancé of three years, Grayston Leonard, 'must be grossed out' by her hairy legs and arm pits.
'I stopped shaving seven years ago and I still get messages like this all the time,' the 30-year-old reality star - who boasts 1M social media followers - wrote on Tuesday.
'And for the record, Gray went to a liberal arts college in Oregon, so he's had his fair share of gross razor-less women.'
Bekah (born Rebekah) went on to explain in her body-positivity Instagram slideshow that 'teachers and coaches would gently tease [me] when any of my jet black leg stubble was growing out' which 'reinforce that my [body] hair was wrong.'
Martinez made the decision to go all-natural in 2018 while she was pregnant with her first child.
'I wanted my daughter (and my future sons) to see that hair on a woman's body is normal. Not shameful. Not gross,' the Bekah & Friends podcaster explained.
'I wanted to demonstrate that body hair is not "masculine," because I am a woman. And so, my body hair is feminine.'
And it wasn't just for her children as Bekah 'wanted to consciously work through the disgust I had in my natural body.'
'I still don't love my body hair,' Martinez confessed.
'In certain settings, I feel people's stares and feel embarrassed. But the feeling has so much less power over me than it used to. And when [my daughter] Ruth points and says, "Mom, my legs look like yours" without any ounce of shame, it is all worth it.'
The Bravo-lebrity shares three children - daughter Ruth, 6; son Franklin, 5; and son Ernest, 21 months - with the 35-year-old Long Beach Rising Climbing Gym founder, whom she originally began dating in January 2018.
Bekah and Grayston raise rabbits for meat and chickens for eggs in their LA backyard.
Martinez last made headlines in 2023 for revealing she was putting her little Ernest 'on the potty' at nine weeks old.
Career-wise, the former nanny is every bit the influencer with paid partnerships for brands like Araza Beauty, Brook Linen, Club Med Cancun, Osea Malibu, My Favorite Genes, and Natural Cycles.
Bekah made history in 2018 as the first pixie-haired woman to compete on The Bachelor, and she was the seventh contestant eliminated by Arie Luyendyk Jr. in season 22 of the ABC dating competition.
The 43-year-old real estate broker went on to marry his runner-up Lauren Burnham in 2019 and they're now proud parents of six-year-old daughter Alessi as well as four-year-old twin sons Senna and Lux.
The Bachelor franchise doesn't exactly have the best track record for lasting marriages as only three couples have remained together after 29 seasons.
Only four couples remain married from The Bachelorette after 21 seasons while the odds are far better on Bachelor in Paradise where 10 couples remain married after 10 seasons.