I don’t know what’s happened with me lately, but things have reached a critical mass with a particularily embarrising problem- out of control eyebrows and weirdo tit hair.
Every morning as I stand before my bathroom mirror, I’m faced with yet another out of control hair on either one of my eyebrows or on my nipples. And we’re talking long suckers here, not the rouge hairs of my youth.
What’s going on here?
Where are these son of a bitching hairs coming from anyways? Why would one hair, in the middle of the night it seems, decide to go so apeshit on my butt? Why don’t the other one’s do the same?
I shave them off whenever I spot one, but lately they’re becoming more and more pervasive, and lengthy- it’s like their possesed. This has become so much of a problem I’m ready to take whatever action is necessary, up to and including, seeing a doctor. But for what? Rouge hair control?
This must be an issue that others have dealt with, so help me out, what should I do? Do I simply keep shaving the SOB’s, or should I start plucking them? Could it be my diet? I tend to eat well, but who knows. What about stress, can stress cause the hairs I’m talking about?
Normally, hairs are supposed to be programmed to grow for a certain length of time, and then stop growing and fall out. Then the hair follicle is supposed to stay dormant for a certain length of time before the cycle starts again.
The amount of time where the hair follicles are active and the amount of time where they’re dormant is what determines the length and thickness of hair on a particular part of your body.
When you have a rogue eyebrow hair that decides to grow to be two inches long when all of your other eyebrow hairs stop at an eighth of an inch, it’s apparently because that one follicle somehow got the idea that it belonged to Leonid Brezhnev or Brooke Shields instead of you and stayed active a lot longer than it was supposed to.
As far as I know, this is completely normal and there’s not a medical treatment for it unless you have some kind of out-of-control hormone problem. If plucking the hairs doesn’t hurt too much and if you don’t get infected follicles from it, and if we aren’t talking about a lot of hairs, I would recommend it over shaving because I think it’s a problem with the individual follicles, and plucking the hair out of them will probably make them a lot slower to grow back.
Of course, if you’re lazy and/or rich you could always get electrolysis.
I’m not doing electrolosis, that’s what old women do. I’m a man, dammit! …albeit a man with eyebrow a tit-hair problems.
It’s not out of control to the point that I think my hormones are wonky, I assume other things would be going on if that were the case. It’s just that more and more of them are getting to be a problem- I’m shaving rouge hairs twice a week!
And I’m shaving them because the guy at the hair salon once told me not to pluck them (Even my hairdresser knows!). His exact words were, ‘You don’t pluck these, do you?’ ‘No sir’ I said. He made it sound like it was awfull to pluck them, and not just because they’d be painfull.
So because of the hair guy, I’ve always be reticent to pluck 'em. But I have to do something, it’s just what. If plucking them means I don’t have to deal with them as much, then so be it. But why the stern warning?
I see no problem with plucking. Millions of women do it every day. Waxing, another common way of dealing with rogue hairs, is basically plucking en masse.
Plucking is OK. And for individual hairs, not very painful.
The last time I visited the doctor was about three years ago. I’m not going to make a special trip to see the guy just because of a little tit hair.
And actually, ‘shaving’ is a bit of a misnomer, what I do is snip them with a scissors. The real question here should be which is better, plucking or shearing? Because the truth is, I don’t want to be dealing with these things twice a friggen week. If I pluck 'em am I inviting infections and other nasty-ness? Or is that the only way to dealing with these less often?
I’d like the straight dope on plucking as well. I’ve been plucking my upper cheeks for 10 years now to avoid getting a shaving line that goes right up to my eyes (pale skin, dark stubble).
I’ve always assumed that plucking would reduce the growth (or at least not induce it). Similarly, v.v. for shaving. However, doing some minimal Googling turned up this post, which says:
To answer part of Cnote’s question, I’ve never had a problem with infections from facial plucking, but I do (very rarely) get an ingrowing hair.
I’m only a first-year medical student, so I always have to cover my ass like that because I never know when you’re going to come down with some kind of nipple gangrene and blame it on me. But if you don’t find it too unpleasant and your nipples don’t fall off, then pluck away!
And run the risk of ingrown hairs, abscess formation, cellulitis, septic thrombophlebitis, pulmonary emboli, shock, ARDS, and death.
And what the hell are you hanging out on the message board when you should be studying about kidney failure? You really don’t understand kidney failure fully, do you? Someone could DIE someday because you were hacking around here instead of studying!!! Get back to work!!!
I love ragging on medical students! They’re the part of the totem pole that’s embedded in the ground. Show me a medical student who only triples my work, and I will kis their feet!
-Samuel Shem, The House of God
Hey, Dr. Qagdop! Did you get a load of the “hair guy?”
What? What test do I think we should run next? I think we better do a bone marrow biopsy, a rectal exam and a urethral swab, just to be on the safe side.
He won’t mind if these nursing students observe, will he?
I have been getting my eyebrows waxed for almost 6 years now, I have never had a problem with an ingrown hair, infection or anything. I would suggest plucking. My grandfather had crazy eyebrows, some would get pretty long and wild looking, but he didnt care. I know my eyebrows are gonna get crazy before too long, but I am not going to use electrolysis, I just spend 7-10 bucks and get them ripped out. I definately wouldnt suggest shaving it though. I had a cousin who shaved her boobs around the nipple to get few hairs that were there off, and now she has to do it all of the time. :eek:
Oh, for God’s sake pluck 'em. Millions of women pluck nipple hairs every day. Nothing dire will happen. And they will be a little slower to grow back.
In Japan, both men and women practice eybrow maintenance with plucking, waxing or shaving. It is considered gauche to have bushy eyebrows even if you are a man.
[cruising thru the back pages of GQ, late at night]
Two thoughts.
When you hit your “mid-life”, your body hair starts acting weird sometimes. It’s an overall metabolism/endocrine thing, not merely a “wonky” hormonal problem. And nothing to do with “masculinity”, either.
Some tumors, etc. can cause odd hormonal/endocrine shifts, especially tumors on the various glands (thyroid, pituitary, etc.) that produce the hormones, that can affect body hair growth oddly.
My advice would be, if it truly is something that came on “all of a sudden”, to at least mention it to a doctor, sometime, somewhere.
I say just ask your doc during your next visit.
I love ragging on medical students! They’re the part of the totem pole that’s embedded in the ground. Show me a medical student who only triples my work, and I will kis their feet!