Love Is in the Hair

A high school freshman launches a campaign for female body hair acceptance, ostensibly as support for a friend with polycystic ovary syndrome, in this uneven feminist drama by Cary (the When I Grow Up, I’m Going to Play for series). After classmates mock her best friend Frankie Smith for her facial hair, 15-year-old Evia Birtwhistle starts a Hairy Girls Club and encourages peers to wear fake mustaches to raise awareness of sexist attitudes toward female body hair. Frankie rejects the club (“It’s like you’re taking what happened to me and making a massive joke out of it”), and bullies start including Evia in their taunting. As the HGC gains traction and more hot boys see her “avec-mustache,” Evia wonders whether her club has ruined both her friendship with Frankie and her chances of finding love. Continual pressuring of Frankie to support the HGC by Evia undercuts Evia’s hard-won moments of self-revelation. Boistrous humor adds levity to empathetic depictions of Frankie’s growing body autonomy as well as Evia’s awareness of the sexist conditioning behind female hair removal and her own fraught body image. Evia is Greek; Frankie reads as white. Ages 12–up. Agent: Rachel Hamilton, Ben Illis Agency. (Aug.)