Rachel McAdams and Her Armpit Hair Will See You Now

Celebrities are not, in fact, even close to being just like us. Yes, certain biological processes are probably still about the same for the general population and those fêted stars, but just like us? Nah. “Refreshingly familiar” is about as close as we’re going to get here. 

This is where Rachel McAdams lands with the photos for her much-discussed recent interview with Bustle ahead of her role in the screen adaptation of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. In the movie version of the Judy Blume coming-of-age novel, McAdams plays Margaret’s mom, Barbara, a free-spirited art teacher who is notably bra-free throughout the film, according to McAdams. “I’m playing a kind of wild child, hippie artist mom [who] doesn’t wear a bra throughout the whole film,” she told Bustle. 

She does wear a bra in (some of) the images accompanying the article, and baby, it’s fashion. That’s not the familiar part, nor are the high-waisted latex briefs she’s styled in, of which she said, ​​“With this shoot, I’m wearing latex underwear. But I’ve had two children. This is my body, and I think that's so important to reflect back out to the world.” 

McAdams asked the site, the article explains, to retouch her photos as little as possible, and she looks radiant, her skin luminous and her hair blowout-perfect. The hair on her head, that is: Sound the alarms, because McAdams has armpit hair and we can see it. In the lead image, McAdams sprawls on a velvet loveseat, arms spread wide and draped over the couch. The pose is familiar, mom just taking a single moment at the end of the day, and the tufts of dark armpit hair are too: she’s human! It’s the vintage corset and Giuseppe Zanotti strappy stilettos that strike “relatable” from the record, not to mention the diamonds. And about those shoes: She’s wearing them in the house. They’re on the couch. No “just like us” of mine! 

Yes, I’m aware that these are styled and staged photos. She’s presumably not wearing shoes in the house, she’s wearing shoes in the photo studio. They’re not candids of McAdams on the street in a parenting moment, or mid-sneeze, or even just spacing out with an iced coffee and a pleasantly neutral face. The image of celebrity is largely artifice, and McAdams’s emphasis on avoiding that as much as possible while still participating in the entertainment industry is applaudable. “It’s OK to look your best and work at it and be healthy, but that’s different for everyone,” she told Bustle, and words have never been truer. 

I’d like to remind you of her Girls. Girls. Girls. shoot a few years back, similarly balancing glamour and the confirmation that she is, in fact, a human being. She was pictured in full glam, Versace jacket, bondage-inspired bra with the twin cones of a breast pump affixed to her chest, expressed milk unevenly filling the collection bottles. Parents everywhere undoubtedly hear the ghost of a breast pump’s click-whirr sound in their heads when looking at the image, remember for a moment which side produced more milk, or wonder if McAdams used the blue Spectra or the pink one. Then they think, “That’s not how I looked.” 

And that’s the point of the whole thing: McAdams is showing us that she exists off-screen. She’s playing a part in movies and even in these photoshoots, but she’s a whole human aside from that.

​​“I love that juxtaposition of beauty, glam, fantasy, and then truth,” McAdams told Bustle, and she’s living up to that ideal, with this shoot and others. While she’s not “like us,” McAdams—and her armpit hair and her laugh lines and her breast pump and her willingness to say no to things that don’t feel right to her—brings a whiff of familiarity to the table, and demands acknowledgment that she exists, one flash of body hair at a time.