In phall0106’s thread about his new job, he describes a female co-worker with facial hair.
My hairdresser and I were talking about this last week. Tara said she had a client with long, dark chin hair, an older lady. Tara asked her once if she’d like her to remove the hair, and the lady took offense.
I once worked with an attractive young woman, a lawyer, who had several long black hairs on her neck. They were sparse but very noticeable.
I started to get fuzzy along my jawline after menopause, pale stuff, thankfully, and I have a couple of moles on my face that often sprout one hair. I swear, they grow overnight. I tweeze them, and when the fuzz gets thick, I get rid of it.
Why would a woman of any age be okay with facial hair? phall0106’s co-worker might have a medical condition and maybe she’s unsuccessful at controlling it, but what about the old ladies with beards? Is it like white hair, a proud sign of age?
I suspect that some older ladies have failing eyesight and just don’t notice it.
There was a lady sales clerk at a store I used to go to many years ago. She had a quite thick patch of black hair growing between her breasts, and wore low-cut tops as if to show it off. Ewww.
I have always had heavy facial hair for a female and it is getting worse as I age. I use tweezers and wax as needed to keep it under control. It just pisses me off that now it is coming in white!
I noticed a lady on the bus the other day who had a beautifully trimmed beard. It wouldn’t be my personal choice but there’s no real reason that she MUST get rid of it.
OTOH I would be wary of tweezing hairs out of moles.
I find this repulsive yet fascinating. I’ve only see one woman ever with what might be called a beard and it was indeed heavy. I couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t get rid of it.
Myself, I get a couple-three hairs along my jawline periodically. I tweeze them out the instant I spot them, which sometimes I fear is long after they’ve appeared and I imagine all the people I’ve repulsed.
Oh and I think phall0106’ is a goil. A purse is mentioned in the other thread.
I have one mole that has a big ugly dark hair coming out of it- fortunately, it’s on my leg, and, even better, it’s on a part of my leg that is usually covered by clothes (about 1/3 of the way up from the knee on my thigh). The mole doesn’t stick up from my leg, so I shave the hair when I notice it- I don’t have to tweeze it. I might not notice it until the hair is fairly long- it’s on the back of my leg.
I have no facial hair whatsoever. My leg hair is sparse and light, and I don’t have to shave above my knees. Yay, being 1/32 Native American!
The hair may have grown in so slowly that they didn’t notice it and they don’t think it is a huge enough deal to spend time and money removing it. Or the only people who ever mention it may be stylists and they may feel like since they don’t notice it the stylist is only trying to find a way to drum up more income. I know I have light blonde hair on my upper lip and the woman who waxes my eyebrows always asked if I wanted her to wax it too. I kept thinking, “My hair is very light and very blonde, why would I want to wax it? She must just be trying to wax more stuff for more income.” It took about 6 months of that until I realized that it is blonde but it reflects light and is a little more noticable than I had first thought. I use Nair on it now and that works wonderfully, but since I hadn’t seen it as a problem I didn’t notice it the way I am sure some other people did.
I occasionally interact with a senior vice president who has an upper lip that would be the envy of Ernie Kovacs. I can’t understand why, either. She obviously has a “certain income”. She interacts with other executives on a daily basis - I cannot believe she is not aware of the “urgh” factor.
I once saw a woman with a full, honest-to-god, beard. I don’t mean a shadow, or facial hair, I mean a BEARD. It was longish-maybe an inch, and it went all the way around her face. Otherwise, she was dressed just like any average woman going shopping, (tee-shirt, slacks, hair pulled back in a pony tail). The beard was just so out of place I doubted my eyes and then I heard a man nearby say, “Whoa, was that a bearded lady?”
It was seriously disturbing, just because it was so weird and surreal.
I have to admit, I try to appreciate the glory of variety and how everyone is beautiful in their own way and we shouldn’t have to starve and primp and plaster and pluck and tweeze and chemically burn ourselves into the dominant paradigm’s idea of beauty…but I see facial hair on a woman and go “ick” inside.
When I was working as a social worker in the Bronx, a young Hispanic woman worked there. In the places where Anglo women have ultra-pale peach fuzz, she had fine but definitely black hair.
Lots of guys working in the office (including me). Reaction of guys was not “Eww, chick with facial hair!”; reaction of guys was not “Wow, she’s really cute for a gal who has facial hair!”; reaction was not even “Wow, she’s incredibly yummy to look at, despite the fact that she has facial hair”.
It just didn’t register.
At any given time 2-5 guys would be ignoring their own work to drape their forearms over her cublcle divider and chat her up, try to tease her about something-or-other, etc etc. I suppose you could have gone up to them and asked them right then “Hello, look at Francesca’s face. Does she have facial hair?”, and they would’ve answered in the affirmative with a lot of astonishment. Then laughed about it and relegated it to the same discard pile of “information that is true but totally not relevant”, alongside of things like “most accidents occur in the home” or “you can drown in an inch of water”. Francesca actually has facial hair, ha ha, who would’ve believed it?
She was the kind of spectacularly beautiful that would cause passers-by to walk headlong into elevated train stanchions as they looked back at her over their shoulder, and would give the UPS delivery guy and the photocopier repair fellow instantaneous romantic obsessions.
This pretty much describes my feelings on the subject. I think most women with facial hair fit under pbbth’s description - you might see the hair (or in cases of older women, maybe not see it so well), but it’s happened gradually and you don’t think it’s that big of a deal, plus looking in a mirror doesn’t give you the same perspective as someone standing near you. If a stylist mentions it, you get embarrassed and think they’re just being a perfectionist who’s trying to make more cash off of you.
In other cases, you might have women who don’t think they should have to conform to society’s standards of beauty. I have a good friend who doesn’t shave - legs, underarms, or face - and she does have a fairly substantial mustache going. I think she’s great but I’m ashamed to think about the times I wince at her mustache. She’s had a committed partner for several years now, but I don’t know what she thinks about her mustache.
It could be that some of these ladies are laboring under the delusion that shaving/waxing/Nair-ing it off will “only make it grow back in darker.” It’s a very common old-wive’s-tale.
When I was a young lass, the hair on my arms was dark.* Since my skin is very pale, it was very obvious and I was really embarassed by it. I wanted to remove it but my grandmother gave me dire warnings that doing so would make it come back thicker and darker and my arms would start to resemble the face of a man with a five o’clock shadow. “Once you start, you can never,* ever* stop,” she said.
It’s not even noticible now that I’m an adult. Weird, huh?
Sorry, but my first time seeing a lady with a beautiful handlebar moustache caused me to spew lunch. It was a very visceral thing: I turned around and there she stood at the counter where I was working.
Luckily I had time to get to a restroom.
I’m not proud of it, but it happened, and I didn’t come back to the counter until she had left.
Starting way back when my freshman year of highschool, I’ve shaved my arms. I’m a dark skinned Italian girl, but all of my body hair is blonde, sparse, and very fine. That said, I really like rolling around all smooth-like on my sheets- “feels so good on my skin!” as Eric Cartman would say :). I can’t begin to tell you how many women over the years have literally snatched up my arm and screeched out with wide eyes, “You SHAVE your ARMS? Don’t you know it’s going to grow back thicker and darker?!”
I’ve now been doing it for. . . oh, 6 years? It’s actually thinner, finer, and blonder than when I started. Try telling that to those harpies, though. Of course, I’ve also had people tell me that you shouldn’t shave your thighs because it will grow back thick and dark- I still haven’t figured out why your thighs would be any different than the other half of your legs? People-r-dum.
Regarding moles & hair: First, IANAD. However, moles can be skin cancer. If in any doubt, ask a real MD. People are generally advised not to muck about with moles just in case they are cancerous and the mucking about causes the cancer to spread. Whether a hair indicates a possible problem, no problem at all, or is completely irrelevant, a real doctor would have to say. But that’s probably the reason for caution.
When I was younger, I had a mole on the side of my chin, and out of this mole, there grew a thick, black hair. Many years ago, I had the mole removed, however, the hair still grows. I pluck it as soon as it makes the least little appearance.
My mother has long hairs growing from under her neck, along the line of her throat, like pale fingers cracking from within her trachea. She doesn’t seemed bothered by them (although they freak me out). I told Hallgirl1 that if I ever have wandering hairs, she’s to corner me with tweezers, and if I EVER get to a point in my life where wandering finger-like hairs on my neck and chin don’t bother me, then she’s to take me out back and shoot me.
People-r-dum.