Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today we’re gonna talk about BODY HAIR. What fun! …for some people, I guess? But not for me!
Before we get in to this, standard disclaimer that I can only talk about my own experiences and more general topics most transgender people have dealt with. I don’t speak for all trans people or all trans women, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
Your frame of reference for this is that body hair is one of the things that spikes my GENDER DYSPHORIA.
I had a fair amount of body hair as a dude. I wasn’t like a bear or anything (not talking about the animals, and if you’re not familiar with that term… happy googling!) but neither was I some spritely nymph with skin as smooth as butter.
And so seeing the body hair I had always made me unhappy, and seeing it grow in now gives me a wonderful dysphoria spike. So I’ve got to remove it. And I think a lot of cisgender folks, even cis women, don’t know what that entails.
The first time I shaved my legs was… an experience. It gave me a feeling I’d later identify as gender euphoria, which is exactly what it sounds like, the polar opposite of gender dysphoria.
Shaving legs is something LADIES do (generally, if they want, up to them, also some guys do, but anyway) and then… maybe… I’M A LADY!?!? 😀
It was also TERRIFYING. I’m not sure how to accurately convey what it’s like to be doing something you think might make you feel better, but you’re not sure. And it can’t just be immediately undone.
So what if I hate it? What if it makes me feel no different at all? The latter was the biggest issue for me, because if it didn’t help then was I really trans? I mean yes, sure, you absolutely can be a trans woman and not want to shave your legs. But would *I* be?
It’s all so confusing at every step, and there was an even bigger question that plagued me about this, but I’m saving that for the end.
In any case, this advanced to shaving my armpits and then my arms and then my torso. Which is… a time-intensive process. Just your legs have SO MUCH SURFACE AREA that you never realize until you have to cover all of it.
The problem with shaving my legs is that for some reason the top of my thighs were ALWAYS a problem. Nicks and cuts and horrid razor burn ALL THE TIME. It was very vexing. I’d also routinely get nicks and cuts on my arms, all of this with a brand new blade.
And I’d have to do it, ALL of it… twice a week. Because even though I’m on HRT (hormone replacement therapy), which can possibly slow/thin body hair in trans women, that has not REMOTELY happened for me yet. And who knows if it ever will.
So I gathered up my courage and got myself one of those nasty ladies in the photo above.
If you’re too sweet and innocent to know what that instrument of pain and torture is, it’s an epilator. It has a drum that spins really fast, covered in tweezers, and it RIPS YOUR HAIR OUT BY THE ROOT.
If you’ve never used one… I envy you. Here’s a good way to picture the feeling in your mind. Have you ever plucked an eyebrow hair? Guys, seriously, grab a pair of tweezers and pull one out. Right now. I promise you no one will ever notice.
Okay, hurts like fuck, right? Now imagine about twenty of those at once, per second, sustained over a half an hour all over your body. Yeah that’s right, USING AN EPILATOR CERTIFIES YOU AS A BADASS.
Now these are generally designed/intended/marketed for cisgender ladies, which I bring up only because the instructions that come with it tell you that you should need to do it every three to four weeks.
Oh. OH. IT IS TO FUCKING LAUGH.
Because you lucky cis ladies don’t have hair that’s super thick, or that grows that fast… in general. I know that some of you do, and believe me, I feel your literal pain.
I have to epilate EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.
And did you know that you can’t JUST epilate? Oh no. Because if the hairs are too long, they’ll simply break, and then you end up still being hairy and with a lot of ingrown hairs knocking at the door and dropping off their bags for a long visit.
My epilator comes with an electric razor head I can swap in, and I have to use that first (also once a week!) to trim all the hair down so the epilator can function properly.
The first time I used the epilator, my body looked like I’d fallen into a vat of starving mosquitoes and decided to just camp out in there and chill out for a few hours. It was kind of horrific.
But your skin gets used to it, and now that only happens when I epilate over an area I’ve somehow missed every single time before (which still happens somehow, much to my dismay).
Also! Mine is waterproof and it suggested I epilate in the shower under running water. Which I do, and CANNOT RECOMMEND ENOUGH. I do not know why this is, but it definitely lessens the pain.
I’ve kind of become weirdly fond of the feeling, probably because it hurts less after doing it so much and also because I can feel it wiping out dysphoria as I go. Your mileage may vary.
So what exactly does all this entail? Keep in mind I have to do ALL of this with the electric razor head first, and then the next day I cover the same areas with the epilator.
My toes. The tops of my feet. My ankles. All around my shins and calves. The top/front/sides/back of my knees. The latter is SUPER sensitive because how often does anything touch you there? I still often cut myself there just with the electric razor head.
Every side of my thighs/quads, all the way around. My hips. My lower abdomen. My stomach (WHY IS MY STOMACH SO FUCKING HAIRY UGGGGH), which is not easy because it’s soft and there’s a belly button there because I am a human person.
My torso, my boobs/cleavage (such as they are). The backs of my fingers. The back of my hand. My wrists. All sides of my forearms, inside/outside of my elbows, my upper arms, and the top of my shoulders.
Also I don’t know about anyone else because it would be a weird thing to ask, but my body hair seems to grow in all different directions! So I often have to epilate an area in four different directions to actually get as much of the hair out as possible.
The epilator has attachments it says make it less intense for “sensitive areas”, like armpits and even your face (AND OTHER ADULT PLACES… like bars and night clubs?). I am sad to tell you I will never be THAT brave. So I shave those areas manually with a hand-held razor.
One interesting thing is that the feeling of epilation is SO INTENSE that shaving afterward with a razor and some soap literally feels like I’m just rubbing a piece of silk on my body by comparison. It’s such a weird sensation!
It takes 40-45 minutes to cover all of that. So that’s a good hour and a half of my week, EVERY WEEK, taken up with this. I’m glad to do it, it makes me feel much better, but it always pisses me off that it eats so much of my time.
And if you missed my post on this being part of my own PRIVILEGE (time and money), and that I even have the luxury to do this, you can read more about that at the link.
Quick aside. I’ve found that Tend Skin, an alcohol-based aftershave, works WONDERS if I put it on right after epilating and then a couple times a day for the next day or two. Keeps any razor burn or ingrown hairs to a minimum. Highly recommended.
…but if you DO have any tiny nicks or cuts or ingrown hairs, it’s gonna STINNNNNG. But that’s fine, you just epilated! You’re a goddamned warrior.
I shave one day, epilate the next. Then I’ve got about two and a half days (sometimes a titch longer) of mostly hairless bliss.
By the next day I’ve got stubble. EVERYWHERE. Which just gets longer as the week goes on, until I shave it again. I do ALL OF THIS for not even three full days of peace per week.
Also when you have long hair, the loose ones that just normally fall out in the shower (or any other time) get stuck in your body hair stubble, which is SUPER fun to pick off of yourself all the time.
And I’m still privileged in other ways too, because imagine someone who also gets dysphoria from their body hair but can’t afford an epilator. Or who maybe has a hairy back and lives alone and has no way to remove it!
I’m very thankful my back is basically hairless. I’m sure Susan is too, because otherwise I’d have enlisted her into a ONE-WOMAN BACK SHAVING ARMY… and I suspect that’s not high on her list of things to experience.
I tried seeing if I could just shave with the electric razor head and not epilate… nope. The hair grows so fast I’d have to still do it twice a week, but since it only cuts the hair so close I was eternally covered in stubble.
And that made epilation take longer, because there was more stubble than usual, and it was a disaster all around. Also, to note, even after epilating, I can feel the stubble. It’s never all the way smooth and hairless. NEVER.
Maybe if HRT finally thins/slows my body hair someday it will be, but for now, this is where I’m at. And so here’s the other question that’s plagued me about this since before I was even sure I was transgender.
WHY does body hair bother me?
I have seen women with hairy legs and arms. It’s fine. Hairy anyone, who cares? People can (and should) be as hairy or hairless as they like. So why does it bother me? Why do *I* not want to be hairy?
Is it because I associate it with being a man, because I had body hair when I presented as/thought I was a man?
Or is it because our patriarchal, misogynistic society says “hairy = manly!” and “hairless = being a ‘good’ woman?” I think we’ve all seen the shit a cis woman has to deal with if she just decides to not shave her legs for a while.
If you’re not familiar with that, cis fellas, ask some of the ladies in your life.
Anyway, if it’s because of society teaching us bad things, aren’t I just confirming and feeding into that by shaving my legs and such? Is that bad? Should I just let it be and tell misogyny to go fuck itself?
And I’d never ask that question of any other person, cisgender or transgender or agender or anywhere else between. If they want to shave their legs or anything else, cool! They should! But when it comes to me, I feel like that doesn’t apply for some reason.
I don’t want to accidentally perpetuate stereotypes or feed into things that can be used to hurt/harm other people. That’s been done to me enough in my life.
All I’m left with is knowing I still haven’t figured it out. I don’t know why body hair spikes my dysphoria. It could be one reason or the other, or more likely some combination of both.
But what I HAVE figured out is that regardless of the reason, my body hair being gone makes me happy and lessens my dysphoria, and that’s a good enough reason for now. It’s got to be.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com