Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Today we’re gonna talk about BODY HAIR. What fun! …for some people, I guess? But not for me!
Your frame of reference for this is that body hair is one of the things that spikes my gender dysphoria. It’s probably best to read GENDER DYSPHORIA first so you understand why I do all of what I do to deal with it.
I had a fair amount of body hair pre-transition. I wasn’t like a bear or anything (not talking about the animals, and if you’re not familiar with that term… I wish you a very happy internet search!) but neither was I some spritely nymph with skin as smooth as butter.
Seeing my body hair always made me unhappy, and seeing it grow in now gives me a miserable 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, it’s up to them, but also some guys do and that’s cool). But if I do it, 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? See YES YOU ARE TRANS ENOUGH for more on how what you do or do not do to transition does not determine your transness.
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. Legs on their own have so much surface area, you don’t really 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, even with a brand new blade.
And early on in transition I’d have to do it twice a week. Because even though I was on HRT, which can possibly slow/thin body hair in trans women, it took a long time for that to happen for me. It finally did, but more on that in a bit.
So I gathered up my courage and got myself one of the nasty ladies you see in the header image of this essay.
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? If not, 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. Using an epilator gets you your certified badass card (it’s a great club to be a member of, we all wear sunglasses and are mysteriously stoic).
Epilators are generally designed, intended, and 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 LAUGH.
Because you lucky cis ladies don’t have hair that’s super thick, or that grows all that fast… in general. I know that some of you do, and believe me, I feel your literal pain.
I had 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 came with an electric razor head you could swap in, and I had 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 chill in there for a few hours. It was kind of horrific.
But your skin gets used to it, and eventually that only happened when I epilated over an area I somehow missed every single time before (which happened more than I care to admit).
Also! Mine was waterproof and it suggested you epilate in the shower under running water. Which I did, and cannot recommend enough. Hot water opens the pores and loosens things, so the hairs come out a little easier and it hurts a bit less.
Over time I kind of became weirdly fond of the feeling. Probably because it hurt less after doing it so much, and also because I could feel it wiping out dysphoria as I went. Your mileage may vary.
So what exactly did I epilate? Keep in mind I had to cover all of this with the electric razor head first, and then the next day I’d 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, and back of my knees. And the latter is super sensitive because how often does anything touch you there?
Every side of my thighs, all the way around. My hips. My lower abdomen. My stomach (why does my tummy gotta be hairy?!), and that’s not easy because it’s soft and there’s a belly button there (because I am a human person).
My torso, my boobs and cleavage (such as they were). 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 had 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 was never that brave. 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 felt like I was just rubbing a piece of silk on my body by comparison. It’s such a weird sensation!
It took 40-45 minutes to cover all of that, and again I did it twice – shaving and then epilating. So that was a good hour and a half of my week, every week, taken up with this. I was glad to do it, it made me feel much better, but it always pissed me off that it ate so much of my time.
And if you missed the essay on TIME AND MONEY, remember that I even had the ability to spend that time on shaving and epilating is a PRIVILEGE.
Quick aside. I’ve found that Tend Skin, an alcohol-based aftershave, worked wonders if I put it on right after epilating. 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 sting. But that’s fine, you just epilated! You’re a goddamned warrior.
I shaved one day, epilated the next. Then I had about two and a half days (sometimes a titch longer) of mostly hairless bliss.
By the next day I had stubble. Everywhere. Which just got longer as the week went on, until I shaved it again. I did all of that 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 just 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.
Early on, I tried seeing if I could just shave with the electric razor head and not epilate… nope. The hair grew so fast I’d have to shave twice a week, but since it doesn’t shave all that 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 could feel the stubble. It was never all the way smooth and hairless. Never.
Thankfully, now basically five years into medical transition and being on estrogen injections and not pills, by body hair has thinned and slowed considerably. I stopped needing to epilate a couple years ago. Now I just shave all over (with an electric razor) once a week, and it takes me only about 25 minutes. And though I still get some stubble as it grows back in, it’s not nearly as bad as it was.
But here’s the other question that’s plagued me about this since before I was even sure I was trans.
Why does body hair bother me?
I‘ve seen cis women with hair on their legs and arms. It’s fine. 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, and thought I was, a man?
Or is it because our patriarchal, misogynistic, transphobic society says “hairy = manly!” and “hairless = being a ‘good’ woman?” 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 I feel this way because of society teaching us bad things, am 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?
I’d never ask that question of any other person, cisgender or transgender or agender or nonbinary or anything else. If they want to shave their legs or anything else, cool! They should! And if they don’t, also cool!
I know a lot of trans masc folks for whom body hair is euphoric for them. And that makes me so happy! It’s all about each of us just finding what’s right for us.
But when it comes to me, I feel like that doesn’t apply for some reason. Is this some of my own INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA? Could be.
But I don’t want to do anything that can be used to hurt and harm other people. That’s been done to me enough in my life. See PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU aka MY DAD, for more on how my mom used me as a weapon to wound others.
So all I’m left with is knowing I still haven’t figured it out. I don’t know why body hair spikes my dysphoria.
What I have figured out is that, regardless of the reason, my body hair being gone makes me happy and lessens my dysphoria.
That’s good enough for now.
And maybe that’s all that it needs to be.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com