Audiences don’t flock to superhero films for their sense of realism. Yet Deadpool 2, the latest outing of Ryan Reynold’s wisecracking anti-hero, is being praised for presenting a phenomenon rarely seen on screen, despite its prevalence in the real world: female body hair. 

The fuzz comes part and parcel with Domino, a new character played by Atlanta star Zazie Beetz, who’s already been dubbed “the best thing” about the movie by multiple reviews. 

A mutant whose superpower is the ability to “subliminally and psionically initiate random telekinetic acts that affect probability in her favour” (that means ‘she’s lucky’ to you or me), Domino also rocks noticeable armpit topiary. What’s more, her underarm fluff doesn’t serve as the punchline to any jokes and none of the male characters feel the need to comment on it. It’s simply there. 

As Beetz tells it, the story of how her hair made it onto the big screen without any unfortunate CGI erasure – a la Gal Gadot in 2017’s Wonder Woman – is casually affirming. 

“Before we started shooting I actually hadn’t shaved in a bit, just out of… not even having gotten to it,” she explained in an interview with The Independent. “And my boyfriend, if I remember correctly, [said], ‘Maybe you should keep it’. And I was like, ‘You know what?’ That’s kind of a good idea.’ So I just kept it. And then I sort of tentatively brought it up. Well, not really tentatively, I brought it up. It was something I really wanted to do, also because I just have a lot of friends now who are feeling sexy in their body hair and I wanted to embody that. It’s not something that is gross or shameful.”

Beetz admits there was initial hesitation in green-lighting the decision, concerning the way audiences would react to the presence of hair.

“It’s interesting how strongly people really do feel about armpit hair on women,” she observed. “They have very, very strong opinions about that. But I felt, you know, like that’s not about me, right? That’s about social conditioning and about people’s perception of what women should look like. And, you know, I felt if people got offended by that, that’s not something I really have to worry about.”

Images: 20th Century Fox