A female graduate student has appeared on This Morning to proudly show off her hairy armpits.

Emer O'Toole, 28, appeared on the programme today (May 4) to tackle the pressure on women to conform to "artificial gender norms".

O'Toole explained that she originally planned to not shave for a year, but has decided to continue as long as 18 months so far.

Steve Meddle

She told hosts Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford: "I was living in Dublin and it just hit me that there was so much pressure on women to conform to artificial gender norms.

"All around me my friends were getting laser hair removal, Brazilians, some of them were getting Botox... I just thought where does this end?

"I started examining my own relationship with beauty and with my body. Why did I have to shave?"

She added: "I thought back to when I started shaving and I realised that when I was 14, you know, the hair started sprouting and I didn't think, 'Will I keep these or will I shave them off'. I knew I had to shave them off or everyone would think I was disgusting."

Watch Emer O'Toole on This Morning below (via The Sun):

When asked if she intended to continue her plan, she replied: "The experiment was supposed to be for a year and then the end of the year came and I was like, 'I really like my body hair'.

"I can't believe that I reached 26 before ever even seeing what it looked like and seeing what it felt like and when I did it I thought, 'This is crazy, I love this'."

The London-based student added that men she has dated have not minded the look, saying: "Boys don't care, boys have body hair so they kind of know it's not disgusting."

A live vote carried out during the interview saw a massive 80% of viewers stating that they did not like the idea of a woman with hairy armpits and legs.

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