Body hair keeps breaking the internet, whether anyone actually asked for the discourse or not.
This time it's Amita Rao's turn in the spotlight. Rao plays Issa on FX's Adults, the Gen Z ensemble comedy that just kicked off its second season. The show returned on August 27, and Rao has been making press rounds ever since.
One of those stops was a Hollywood Reporter feature, and it's the photo that set things off. Rao posed with one arm raised, and her underarm hair was visible in the shot. Somehow that became the whole story for a chunk of commenters.
The reaction was swift and predictable. Several users quickly told her to shave, with one writing, "One word: shave." Another said, "Shave them pits jesus," while a third responded with a series of scissors emojis.
Rao didn't let it slide, but she didn't get defensive either. She reposted the Hollywood Reporter article on her Instagram Story and thanked the outlet for featuring her, then turned her attention to those who had been discussing her armpit hair.
Her actual response was the kind of line that gets screenshotted. She wrote, "& to all the people in the comments who think this is a lot of hair, dm me & I'll send you a pic of my bush," adding it "goes down to around my knee in the winter."
That's it. No lecture, no meltdown. Just a joke sharp enough to end the conversation.
The moment tracks with who Issa already is on screen. Issa is loud, loyal, passionate, and has armpit hair, and she wants you to ask about it, according to her own FX character description. Life apparently imitated the writers' room here.
Rao herself is 27. The actress and comedian plays Issa, the delightfully confident and outrageously funny member of the core Adults gang. The show was built by former late-night writers. Rao played Issa in FX's Adults, created by The Tonight Show writers Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw.
Season two has bigger storylines waiting, armpit hair aside. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the love triangle now driving the show, Rao said: "What was always been interesting to me was the tension between Issa and Anton as best friends." That tension, between her character, her onscreen boyfriend Paul Baker, and her friend Anton, is central to where the new episodes are headed.
None of that context slowed down the armpit hair chatter, though. It rarely does. Body hair discourse has a habit of resurfacing every few years, usually aimed at women who never asked to be a talking point.
What's different here is the delivery. Rao didn't write an essay about body autonomy or tag a feminist hashtag. She just made the trolls the punchline.
Adults is now airing new episodes weekly on FX, with Rao's Issa arguably funnier for having lived through this exact kind of internet noise before the cameras ever rolled.
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