On Friday, the former “The Bachelor” cast member shared a photo on Instagram of herself dressed to the nines at an event. In her caption, Bekah revealed that this outing was a momentous occasion because she “went to a red carpet event without shaving my legs."

She described it as a “big deal” because she’s “finally gotten to the point where I feel (almost) totally comfortable like this.” Bekah explained that she made the decision to stop shaving “about a year ago,” and it’s a huge jump from how she used to feel when she was younger. “I grew up HATING the hair on my body,” she wrote.

Everything changed when she got pregnant last year. The 24-year-old wrote that she wanted to “overcome this insecurity", but it hasn’t all been easy.

“It’s not about ‘not believing in shaving’, it’s about believing I AM BEAUTIFUL, ATTRACTIVE AND ‘FEMININE’ NO MATTER WHERE I HAVE HAIR ON MY BODY,” she explained. “It’s about showing girls you don’t have to listen when society tells you your natural features are ugly or gross.”

Bekah concluded, “Remember, if someone has a problem with the way you look, that’s an issue with THEIR mentality, not YOUR body.”

Although Bekah received many positive comments related to her empowering caption, she shared one set of videos from Instagram user John James, who took issue with her not shaving. She reposted his videos criticizing her idea of “self-love” and clapped back in captions of her own.

At one point, John said in a video, “I could never date a chick — or I would never be attracted to a chick — who had armpit hair more than me and more leg hair than me. That is a ‘no‘ for me personally.”

She captioned the video, “Did you read my post???? It was about how I was bullied and hated my body because of my body hair and wanted to teach myself to love my body in spite of it…”

Later on, Bekah recorded a message of her own and encouraged her followers not to let the negative comments get them down.

“When you are loud and confident and proud, people are not going to like you. People are going to think you’re annoying, and I know sometimes I am annoying. But people are going to try to take that power away from you,” she said.

Bekah continued, “Small, fragile people who have always felt powerful tearing other people down and being in control are going to want to steal away your joy. But we can’t let them. We can’t let them, we can’t back down, we gotta keep doing us.”