Female beauty standards have evolved a lot recently. But one stigma continues to endure: facial hair. While it's totally normal to have a little or even a lot of fuzz on your chin, upper lip, or between your brows, most women still opt to hide or get rid of it by shaving, waxing, plucking, or bleaching. Yet increasing numbers of women are rebelling against the hair removal norm and instead are proudly letting it grow out naturally.

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The ladies behind this female facial hair movement are tired of all the time spent on maintenance, and they hope to spread a message about acceptance and self-love. Here's what they say about their “excess” facial hair and why they've put down their razors once and for all.

Sophia Hadjipanteli

"When you live in a world where the next best thing is just a scroll away, it can be really intimidating for people who have not entirely developed their self-confidence yet," the model told Health. "We end up hiding things online and only show what we think will have the best response. This is definitely a cycle I fell victim to until I started the #UnibrowMovement."

Nova Galaxia

“Women shouldn’t have to shave if they choose not to, but what about those of us who have way more hair than what is considered socially acceptable?” she wrote in a blog post for Graceless. “What about us women with dark, thick tummy and chest hair? What about us women who are fully capable of growing a big, bushy beard?”

Scarlett Costello

“Preferred eyebrow half,” she captioned this fierce and proud image of her unibrow.

Shelly Riner

“I've always had a lot of dark, coarse hair all over my body: on my arms, my legs, my armpits, you name it,” she told Health. “I'm the type of person who generally doesn't care what others think of me, so making the choice to let my hair grow wasn't earth-shattering.”

Little Bear Schwarz

“Yes, I have a beard due to my polycystic [ovarian] syndrome,” she told Health. “But it’s not in and of itself deleterious to my health, nor is it a ‘mistake,’ a ‘joke,’ a ‘tragedy’ or a subversion TO or a detraction FROM my womanhood. On the contrary it is beautiful, natural, and the crowning glory OF my womanhood.”

J.D. Samson

“Before I was proud of my facial hair, I tried to mask it as much as possible,” Samson told Marie Claire last November. “I definitely took the advice of my mother and sister about when I was supposed to bleach it.”

Femina Flower

“Can i call myself super human if i have quite the cutest little nose hairs, a baby mustache surrounded by rather shaping facial hair (i swear its coming in nice), hella blemishes, and unplucked eyebrows that resemble those furry caterpillars we've always been afraid of having on our faces?” she captioned this Instagram photo.

Sia Cooper, the blogger behind diaryofafitmommy.com, posts regular (and sometimes hilarious) updates on how she stays committed to fitness while raising young kids.

While Cooper has a devoted following, she also has critics who call out the way she mixes gym time with kid time. Fed up with the negativity, she took to Instagram to address the haters who claim she’s not doing motherhood “correctly.”

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In her post, she listed the many reasons she’s been deemed a “bad mom," including working out during pregnancy, working out while having kids, caring about her looks and health, working out in Target, and taking time for herself. All of this hate prompted her powerful mama bear reply.

“I’ve learned that the true ‘bad moms’ out there are the ones who constantly tear other moms down by judging them,” she wrote, captioning a photo of herself drinking wine in a sports bra and “bad mom” written on her arm. “Those moms are the ones who are truly insecure and have strong feelings of inadequacy because why else would they do that? Misery loves company.”

After addressing her critics, she ended the post on a positive note, making it clear that there are no “good” or “bad” moms.

“We all are running in the same race and doing the best that we can," she went on. "Motherhood is not a one size fits all—what works for one family may not work for the next. So who are we to judge another mom’s choices or reasoning? Being a mom is hard enough and if all the following make me a 'bad mom' then I’ll gladly wear it proudly!”

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Cooper is known to speak out on social media, particularly about body positivity. Last month, she put up a cheeky before-and-after image to let her followers in on a trick influencers use to make their normal-size butts look more prominent. 

“It’s amazing what a little bending forward, hiking up your underwear, arching your back, and sticking your booty out can do,” she wrote in that post. “A picture is just a split second. We all look different from different angles.”

Still riding the high that came with nailing a pre-marathon tempo run just an hour earlier, I was completely thrown by a sudden onset fever, torrential sweating, nausea, and searing pain in my left ankle. Considering I was attending back-to-school night for my two teenage daughters, Adair and Taylor, when the symptoms hit, not embarrassing them by vomiting or fainting in one of their classrooms was my primary concern. And, once I was home—and after a full-on internet searching session—I decided it was "simply" a stress fracture.

When I finally visited an orthopedic surgeon friend a couple days later, he was justifiably irritated with my flippant diagnosis and delayed treatment, but also confused. An X-ray and MRI showed no injuries, so he took fluid from my engorged ankle and cultured it over the weekend.

It was Labor Day weekend 2016, meaning I had plenty of time to writhe in pain—I birthed two babies and this was worse—and be frustrated that I didn’t have the energy to crew for friends in The Grand Traverse, an ultra trail race from Crested Butte to Aspen, Colorado. I was actually supposed to be running with them. Nothing made sense.

Tuesday morning dawned with a text from my doctor saying, “You need to come in today.” Denial was at an all-time high, so I tried to delay the visit using deadlines, my husband being out of town, and my kids as excuses. Yet my doctor’s insistence was raising a red flag (as if the pain, need for crutches, and listlessness weren’t enough), so I drove myself the hour to his office and hobbled into an exam room around noon. Things got serious quickly: My diagnosis was a staph infection in the ankle joint, and it was spreading up my leg towards my knee.

At this point, the doctor was fairly certain he could save my leg (WTF!) if he went in and flushed out the infection, and so I began massive doses of antibiotics and was admitted to the hospital that day for observation.

Yet I balked. My husband wouldn’t be back until Thursday. The kids were home alone and I had the car. I didn’t like taking medicine. He cut through my feverish haze by explaining that if I postponed treatment until Thursday, I would definitely lose my leg. And waiting until Friday would be the final nail in my coffin, literally. So at 3 pm, I entered surgery.

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When I awoke, I immediately looked toward my foot. It was still there! But little did I know, surviving treatment and surgery was the easy part. Living again would be the real test.

Still not grasping the severity of my condition, I asked the good (I’m still here after all) but decidedly humorless infectious disease specialist how all the meds I was taking would affect my training for the New York City Marathon. I felt myself shrinking into the bed and falling into a black hole of hopelessness as she explained not only should I never expect to run or race again, it was time to find a new hobby…