This is exactly how you should be dealing with your body hair.
Eyebrows
Firstly, your eyebrows aren’t long enough. Buy some Rogaine and keep applying until your eyebrows are long and luxurious, falling down to your cheekbones and thick like a horse’s tail. Then, fishtail braid across your face for a bohemian look.
Eyelashes
Eyelash extensions are all the rage…now. Get the jump on next year’s trends by embracing eyelash reductions. Wax them all out, then slather vaseline on your lash line to ensure as many ingrown hairs as possible.
Upper lip
Pluck every third hair for that “natural shadow.”
Armpit
Shave the hair and mix with the blood of a barracuda caught with a silver hook. On the night of a waxing crescent moon, drink the mixture and stare into the eyes of an old cat. The cat will speak, and its words will let you know what you want for lunch tomorrow.
Arm
Start brushing it in the other direction because you bow for no follicle.
Knuckle
Start a tumblr that’s just a different, close-up photo of your knuckle hair every day. Wait for someone to write a profile piece about how empowered about your body you are.
Leg
Always maintain a four day stubble you you can rub your legs together and emit high-pitched scratchy noises like a cricket.
Pubic
If your partner wants you to shave it off, grow it out. If people tell you it’s akin to human torture to be expected to be bare, remove all hair plus at least three layers of skin. Get a reverse landing strip. Wax it off and tape it to your outer thighs. Whatever it is, it must be done out of spite.
Tags: body hair, i shave/wax/tweeze some and leave others and that’s my business who cares, let’s all get eyelash extensions though, pubic hair
So for real, I’m considering getting a bikini wax for the first time in my life. (I have never waxed any other part of me either.) How bad of an idea is it?
It hurts, but only temporarily. I’m fond of the smoothness of my own parts (especially in the summer), so I’m a fan of it on myself. Get recommendations for waxers from friends, though! The person who does it should be kind, and certified, and have a sense of humor.
It’s not *that* bad, or at least I didn’t think my first time was. It will hurt when the rip the hair off but no residual pain. Find the highest rated place on Yelp and enjoy the bliss of having smooth, smooth skin for weeks after!
Oh it huuuuuuuuuuurts. How bad it would be is sort of inversely related to how useful it would be. Weeklong beach vacation? Probably worth it. Just for funsies? Run for the HILLS.
Well, pretty much any and all body hair grooming I do is for funsies because I have absolutely no preferences one way or the other, and it’s based entirely on how lazy I’m feeling at any particular point in time.
In my personal experience, depends on the waxer. I’ve had good experiences with waxers who were attentive to me, comfortable with their job, and were willing to share advice.
An impatient, grumpy makeup artist who moonlights as a waxer left me sore for days. So basically, as in all things, trust your instincts and stand up for yourself to have a positive experience!
It’s kind of startlingly painful for a bit, but I enjoy the results.
I’d start with something a little less painful, myself, but it’s really not that bad. The pain is temporary, but you may be sensitive and have red marks for a day or two.
Just be super clear on what sort of bikini wax you’re getting. They range from just the edges to absolutely everything (brazilians), with variations in between – and standard terminology is vague (‘only the top, not the back, definitely not the middle’ – what parts of the body are those???).
My first experience involved a language barrier and me going much, much more bare than I’d intended.
Oh dear. That is good to know.
Make sure you’re going to a reputable place that does NOT use strip wax. Read online reviews, do some research, especially if you don’t know what your pain threshold for waxing is. Also maybe just get your lower leg or eyebrows or lip or what ever interests you waxed first? I get the whole kitten-caboodle done regularly, I have a woman who I really like and trust and have formed a weird gynocologist-like relationship with, it makes the experience less like a chore I’m dreading and more like a vaguely unpleasant spa experience.
If you can find a place in your area that does sugaring, go with that instead. Much less painful.
I’ve started getting my armpits done regularly since March and the pain doesn’t get much better, but it is over very quickly, my regular person is lighting fast which makes it better!
It’s lovley being smooth! I’m only getting a week of real hairlessness and then it’s stubble and growing it out again for 2-3 weeks. Apparently if you stick with it you get longer without hair but I’m still waiting on that one.
I got one once and never again. So painful, and I got the worst ingrown from it.
Fun fact: as part of getting an esthetics license, you learn how to wax by waxing your classmates, much like nurses learn IVs. On Brazilian day, one person had to be the model, and yours truly volunteered. I expected the demo to be done by my normal instructor; however, there was a stand-in that day and she… uh… didn’t do a good job. So bad that, at one point, she declared, “I’ve been waxing for ten years and I’ve never seen anyone bleed so much!” and gave up, leaving me a little patchy.
After suffering from the results for a week, I asked my normal instructor to fix the damage. She had heard what happened and was a little tenative about causing me anymore suffering, BUT in a plot twist, she was good at waxing! And it was incredibly painless and she did a great job!
This is basically a story to say that I had possibly *the worst* introduction to waxing and yet, in the capable hands of a talented waxer that I trusted, it was A-OK. Read reviews, get word of mouth, and if you find someone you like, stick with ’em! I’ve been getting waxed since then, and as a plus side, your tolerance increases exponentially.
Take an ibuprofen an hour beforehand, and don’t do it right before your period because you’ll be much more sensitive! I love the smoothness of it and my man does too, but you do you 🙂
AH! make a mix of coconut oil with some (key: very small amount of) tea tree oil for the ingrowns/to sooth the skin after!
It’s bad but the kind of bad where you’re just formulating the “OUCH” in your head and the pain is already receding. I found armpit waxing to be way more painful than bikini.
For your first, try ibuprofen beforehand and wear looser clothes (cotton underpants and a skirt) so you don’t have any chafing while you’re at your barest and sorest.
At last, I finally know how to get rid of the “what should I have for lunch today?” indecision wormhole in my life! Thank you, Jaya!
The ironic thing is you probably won’t be feeling up for lunch after drinking that concoction. Even the next day.
“Whatever it is, it must be done out of spite.” Jaya, you speak to my bitter robotic heart. BLESS YOU
A female friend of mine who is pretty femme has full-blown goatee and it’s the baddest ass thing I’ve ever encountered.
I was watching the 70s TV adaptation of Clouds of Witness recently, and I’m pretty sure everybody in the courtroom scenes took your eyebrow advice (or at least the Rogaine part). There is no way those eyebrows just grew that way.
Mine do…
Then you should definitely be a judge or something, because that is some naturally Imposing face action.
Left to their own devices they pretty much reach my hairline!
And in a weird moment of synchronicity, Strong Poison (although it’s the Petherbridge/Walter version) is about to start on one of the rnadom freeview channels.
The reverse landing strip, known in some cultures as the crop circle.
where I come from we call it the monk’s tonsure
god dammit i was talking to a customer service person on the phone when I read this and had to work SO HARD to contain my laughs. well played.
Perhaps if I practice rubbing my stubbly legs together enough, I will soon be able to tell bystanders the temperature (as long as they’re willing to count the number of scratchy noises in 15 seconds and then add 37, of course).
“Oh Barbara, how lovely! The crickets are out!”
I’m having a full-on crisis about my leg hair rn, because I know I absolutely shouldn’t give a shit about my leg hair. But I do. I really, really do. I get obsessed with ingrown hairs. Now that it’s summer and my legs are bare, I poke and pluck at the ingrowns whenever I’m stressed out and working at home. My legs are in worse shape by the week. So I want to be rid of all of it, just get the whole shebang lasered off, but that feels so vain.
This article should totally be helping, but it isn’t, and that’s just awful because both it and Jaya are the best.
I have lasered my face and it has been life-changingly awesome. I cannot say enough amazing things about lasering off hair you stress about. I used to obsess over chin hairs and eyebrow hairs and mustache hairs and I don’t anymore, even though I still have some. I know they’re all going away over the course of several treatments.
Seriously. If you have the money for it, or if you can find the money for it, do it. It’s one of my top-five life choices.
Also vanity is totally acceptable and treating the root cause of your obsession cancels out any lingering vanity. (Pun intentional, of course.)
I’m brutally jealous – I should be a person laser works for (black hair, pasty white skin) and yet months of treatment to my chin and brows did nothing but cost money. SIGH.
OTOH, I can almost braid my chin hair now, so that’s cool.
They do say faces are the least susceptible to lasering because it’s much more hormone-related than body hair. My face hasn’t worked half as well as the rest of me, but it’s still been an improvement.
Cosign entirely on lasering … I’m getting my mustache and bikini line done right now and it is WONDERFUL. Groupon (and similar sites) have deals constantly, so just do a little cross-research with Yelp or friends or whatever and reap the benefits. I’d like to get everything done eventually over the course of the next few years, so I will only have to shave every couple weeks or so for the rest of my life. T’would be a dream.
I got a home laser thing and it is joyful. I did bikini line, belly, chin etc first because those were the areas that really bothered me and I’m lazy, and now I’ve mostly done my lower legs and armpits. I heartily recommend it.
Sooooo … what brand, if it’s not against Toastie regulations to spruik brands? I’m interested in getting one, but I know some don’t work that well.
Mine’s a smoothskin – i am in the Uk so not sure where it’s available.
Seconding the other commenter–I’m desperate for a home kit that would actually work.
The thing about “vanity” is that it’s often (usually?) directed at women who are so shallow* as to actually do things in order to conform to beauty standards, rather than being “naturally” beautiful, which is part of the fun catch-22 we have to deal with if we dare to go anywhere that other people can see us. As long as you’re not judging other people for not lasering their legs, you should do it.
*Note: I do not believe it’s shallow to want to look a way that makes you comfortable.
yes yes yes to this.
caring about your appearance isn’t shallow, it’s first of all, a healthy aspect of self-expression, and second of all, a practical response to living in a world where you’re judged on your appearance.
When I was a baby feminist, I had what felt like this really profound revelation that I only cared about shaving my legs because modern media culture was brainwashing me into caring about body hair, and I needed to fight the power. But then I grew up a little. I still care about my appearance, because I’m human. I still don’t shave, but now for me, it’s because I like how I look with hairy legs and pits. Other people have different personal preferences, and it’s actually really paternalistic and insulting to assume that you know better than she does why any given woman chooses to present the way she does.
It is worthwhile to interrogate how much your feelings about appearance are cultural baggage vs. personal preference, but even if you decide they’re mostly cultural baggage, it’s okay to pick your battles. I also usually don’t wear makeup, but you know what? I do for job interviews. It makes me look that much more feminine, and it makes me that much more likely to be taken seriously, and it’s unfair that that’s the way the world works, but if the choice is between sticking to my principles and getting the job? I’d rather have the paycheck.
It’s a privilege, but if you can afford it, why not try lasering off the hair? It’s not unhealthy (like, for example, going on a crash diet because you are fatter than society likes), and yeah, there are other things you could spend the money on instead, but it’s your money, and if it leads to a permanent way to free up the mental real estate you’re currently devoting to leg hair, maybe it’s worth it.
As a dedicated picker I commiserate. Plot twist: I’m also a licensed esthetician. I recommend a 50/50 hydrocortisone + neosporin mix applied to the just picked areas to take down the redness, inflammation, and bacterial growth. A really good body exfoliant with a high (10%ish) aha will help prevent the reappearnce of more ingrowns.
A+ photo choice.
Thanks to the excellent graphic, I’m now happily humming “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” under my breath.
Same. (“Boys becoming men, men becoming wolves”)
No advice for what to do with a lady-beard, but I’m aspiring to the day that mine is so long I can braid it.
Does the advice for knuckles carry over to my hairy toes? Or is it Instagram for toes, tumblr for fingers?
I see that Jaya and I are of a mind when it comes to eyebrow hairs. I love when I wake up from a nap and my right eyebrow (it is always the one on the right) has combed itself upwards so that I have two inches of eyebrow hairs sticking up like some kind of mad scientist werewolf thing.
I also hate it when I go to get them waxed for a formal event (like my sister’s wedding) and the beautician pulls out the scissors to trim. Why??? why do they hate soft fluffiness and insist on punishing my unusual aesthetic preferences by making my eyebrows painful to touch, like rubbing a shark’s skin backwards???
(I’m an unrepentant face-toucher. Also, having long eyebrow hairs makes them easier to tug on when I get to a particularly tense section of a book. I’m not the only one who tugs on their eyebrows while reading, am I? Once I accidentally pulled out a full third of one during an especially absorbing novel.)
FELLOW EYEBROW TUGGER HERE!!! I was so sure I was alone. I get so many weird looks for pulling at my fulsome brows – I like to think everyone else is just jealous that they don’t have their own glorious caterpillar companions.
FELLOW EYEBROW TUGGER HERE!!! I was so sure I was alone. I get so many weird looks for pulling at my fulsome brows – I like to think everyone else is just jealous that they don't have their own glorious caterpillar companions.
Thank you thank you thank you! UK Toastie here who is verrrry interested in the idea of a home laser and who is almost pathologically opposed to underarm and leg hair (my own by the way – totally unfussed by other peoples). I instinctively trust a Toast product review more than any amount of gushing on Amazon / other equiv sites, so I shall investigate the Smoothskin forthwith.
No problem! I had the previous generation and the lead broke; they'd stopped making them so i couldn't buy a replacement and they offered me the new generation half price instead – bargain! It is really good – no gel needed, much quicker, looks at your skin tone and selects power automatically rather than making you do it, and much quicker between flashes. So much less of a faff than the one I had first.
AH! make a mix of coconut oil with some (key: very small amount of) tea tree oil for the ingrowns/to sooth the skin after!
Also trim a bit before because it is really painful to wax long hair!
”Start a tumblr that’s just a different, close-up photo of your knuckle hair every day”
done and done.
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/knucklehairenthusiast