Is it an old wive’s tale or is it truth that shaving causes hair to become thicker and darker? Will facial hair eventually get this way through maturing whether shaved or not? Does this rule only apply to facial hair or will any hair become thicker and darker if shaved (makes me think of Kramer on seinfeld, opening his shirt to jerry, jerry screams “thats not natural!”) If shaving does cause this, why? Would cutting the hair with scissors do the same thing, or tweezing? I just don’t understand how cutting the hair at the surface could make the actual structure of the hair change. Anyone know anything on this topic?
There is no structural change. However, unshaven hair has a fine, tapered end, while shaved hair has a blunt end, jaggedly cut. This means that shaved hair will feel rougher to the touch, more bristle-like. The flat ends may also make it appear darker. Plus, most boys start shaving some time around puberty, so their facial hair is undergoing changes unrelated to shaving – this means that where thin, light hair was removed, heavier, darker hair may grow in, not because the shave did anything, but because there is an obvious demarcation between before and after which would otherwise be a gradual continuum.
–Cliffy
If you take a pine two-by-four, twelve feet long, and bolt one end to the driveway, it will bend in the wind. You can grab it and wiggle it quite a bit. If you then cut it to six inches high, the stub will seem stiff and completely inflexible. Hairs are similar.
In other words, Cliffy’s quite correct.
Yep, it’s partly a tactile illusion (the short hair stup feels “thicker”) and partly an optical illusion (short hair against bare skin looks darker than longer hair). Similary, the notion that the hair grows “faster” after it was cut, this is mostly an optical illusion (hair doubling its length in a shorter time because there’s less to grow).
Ok explain this to me…When I was 23 all I could grow on my face was a cheesy moustache and a few stray hairs on my face. Now I am 33 and I can grow a full beard (which I am sporting now). Does that mean I was still going through puberty from 23 until now and am I still finding that the more I trim the more pronounced my beard becomes, plus I find that my cheesy moustache is tones thicker than it was when I was 23…I have pictures but nothing that I can post at this time. You all could be right but since I have always been a slow bloomer than maybe my hormones or whatever is needed to grow facial has slowly went into my manhood development than the average male.