Confessions from a woman with facial hair
What I want to hide from you the most
As I sit down in the living room of my new apartment to write this, I notice a dull headache. I hear Stefan playing piano in the room adjacent and church bells ringing not too far away.
What I want to tell you today is not as beautiful as the sound of Stefan’s fingers hitting the keys; nor as juicy or delicious as the fresh-squeezed orange juice enjoyed this morning. It’s not as nice as the sunshine, which plants hot sweaty kisses on us each time our feet take us out to the balcony.
It’s not as soft, cute, or cuddly as the cat that sleeps on the couch next to me; not as soothing or charming as the birds chirping or breeze blowing in the trees behind the building.
What I want to share with you today feels like the worst admittance of all, a fact so unacceptable I shouldn’t dare speak it out loud. It’s why I’m most scared to send this newsletter; I’m more frightened to share this with you than anything else.
The most abominable of sins: the hair on my chin.
Now the soft slow hum of Stefan’s song comforts me as I find the courage to write these lines.
Will you mock me for writing this? Will you laugh behind my back and smile the next time you see me? Will you judge me from afar, unsubscribe, make a joke out of my misery?
I don’t know how or when it started, but at some point along my journey, I started sprouting thick, dark hairs all over my chin, jawline and neck.
What started as a small embarrassment and inconvenience somehow grew into, what feels like for me, a full-fledged lady beard. If I don’t take care of it, I imagine, it can easily grow into a grotesque sort of half-beard, a noticeable sight from the other side of the table, one that makes me lower my head in shame.
I want to hide this from you.
I don’t want you to know that I hate looking in the mirror every day, wishing for a perfect ‘feminine’ chin and neck and seeing a stubble that I label gross and unlovable instead. With hair so black, the dots litter my chin, not really belonging there but not belonging anywhere else either.
So nearly every day, for I don’t know how many years, I pick up my tweezers and begin to pluck, pluck, pluck away at the stubborn hair growth that I wish wasn’t.
Thinking of it now I crave a cigarette.
I pluck and I pluck, and I remove a dozen hairs, or two or three. I put the tweezers down, clean off my face, look in the mirror. Dozens more black spots scream out to me, urging me to hate myself as I try to keep a positive attitude. I pick up the tweezers and pluck a few more stubborn hairs, wondering if this will ever end.
Eventually I quit, unsatisfied but determined to do something with my day other than self-loathing and obsessive plucking. Usually, the process begins again the next day, or the next - the longer I put it off, the more consternation grows when I finally face the sight of my face and see what’s been brewing there in the absence of my self-scrutiny.
Several times people have suggested to me that I just get laser hair removal, if it’s such a big deal. And yeah, maybe that would eliminate a problem - poof - facial hair gone. Maybe I wouldn’t ever have to pluck - or think about - my hairy situation ever again. But would I be satisfied with that?
I have problems with the idea of getting my facial hair lasered off.
First, I have better things to spend my money on than invest thousands into something which is solely designed to help me better fit into society’s unrealistic ideas about what a woman should look like.
Second, what would the side effects be of such laser hair removal?
Third and finally, what will I tell my daughter someday, when she comes to me with the same ‘issue’? - Yes darling that’s terrible, we’ll laser it off right away. Best erase it before anyone even notices it’s there.
That’s kind what we do as young girls, desperate to enter the realm of womanhood. At least that’s what it was like for me. As a kid, having hairy legs was normal. But upon reaching a certain age, where suddenly I could perceive and be perceived as a sexual being, I couldn’t wait to eliminate my leg hair. In secret, I grabbed my mothers razer and some dish soap. I shaved for the first time, and only did my mother talk to me about it after it had already been done.
I would continue for the next nearly 20 years, careful to deceive anyone I’d meet into believing I didn’t even have any body hair at all.
Before we even really get the chance to think for ourselves, we’re told that to be a woman means to have no visible body hair.
And as a result, everywhere I go today, women perpetuate this standard. Everywhere I look, I see women who have removed their hair on the obvious parts at least - legs, underarms. Where else they shave, pluck, wax, epilate or laser is anyone’s guess.
Like the Spanish woman I met who, miraculously had no hair on her arms. At the sight of her body, I confirmed the self-defeating belief I’d long been harboring inside me: Yes Chelsea, you are a hairy freak. Other women aren’t like you.
When in reality, the Spanish woman, who like me was probably naturally covered in a layer of dark hair, confessed that she’d had the hair on her arms removed by laser.
Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me and is the reason why I have’t already lasered my hair off.
Maybe I prefer the struggle. Of being in a woman’s body, and not quite matching the feminine ideal our society simultaneously worships and crucifies.
Maybe I like embracing both the masculine and feminine sides within me.
Maybe I like the balance of what I judge to be beauty and ugliness, both of which belong to me.
As uncomfortable as it may be, when my facial hair stands out like a splash of black paint where it’s not supposed to be, maybe I like it when other people have to face the discomfort of my body, too.
When the message I’ve heard all my life is, “You’re fundamentally wrong; fix yourself.”
And I get to show up and be who I am anyway.
Self-loathing, and self-love, and all.
That’s what it means to be human for me today, and many days.
How is it to be you?
Yours truly (& hairy),
Chelsea