A reader writes:

I have a strange question for you and your readers: how appropriate is body hair in professional offices?

I’m a woman in my 20s who prefers to keep my underarms unshaved, though they’re tidy and unobtrusive. (I have light hair, which makes it less noticeable.) In general, I think sleeveless blouses can be fine at many offices, but I’ve found myself balking at airing out my underarms in professional contexts and am not sure whether to avoid sleeveless tops forever or just get over it.

This isn’t an issue that often — I’m a freelance writer and work at home/in casual-dress environments 95% of the time. But every now and then I need to dress more professionally, and I’m wondering if I need to make it policy to keep my pits to myself?

(For the record, I wouldn’t spare it a second thought if a female coworker happened to have underarm hair that showed — but if a man at a nearby desk wore a shirt that showed his armpits, I’d find it unpleasant. Not sure what to do with that distinction. Surely there’s a difference between tidy office pits that are normally fine to wear to work — unlike sleeveless men’s shirts — and “dude at beach” hair??? Or am I doomed to cardigans anytime I’m in a business casual workspace?)

I have to confess that I’m squicked out by armpits in general — men’s and women’s — and if it were up to me, no armpits would ever be on display anywhere and sleeveless tops would be abolished. I am strongly pro-sleeve for all, and so I’m not a reliable source for an answer to this.

But I will try to put my bias aside and answer this.

We do have different standards for men and women’s armpits at work. Men generally can’t wear sleeveless tops to work in most office environments at all, so their armpit hair never really comes up as a question. But in many/most offices, it’s fine for women to wear sleeveless tops, and you could argue that if sleeveless tops are okay, then any resulting visible armpit hair is no one’s business.

On the other hand, while there are big regional and cultural differences on this, there are certainly office environments where wearing a skirt that exposed obviously hairy legs would be Not Done. It’s not necessarily that it would result in a formal talking-to, but in some places it would be a thing that was noticed and made people think you were less than professionally groomed. Which is stupid and unfair, but would definitely be a thing in some — not all — offices. (I think this is changing though!)

My guess is that armpit hair falls along the same lines: fine in some offices, not fine in others. And so you’d have to know the culture you’re working in, and how much you care about complying with that culture’s norms and expectations.