My arm hair has gradually gotten less prominent as I’ve gotten older, too. So has my leg hair, come to think of it.
I’m wondering- do we know how the amount of body hair someone has is inherited? I’m 1/32 Native American, and have less body hair than most women of European ancestry (I’ve never had to shave my thighs). But most of the rest of my ethnic makeup is northern European (Scandinavian and British), and those groups aren’t normally too hairy, either. I’m wondering because Mr. Neville is ethnically Jewish and really hairy- when we have kids, how hairy are they likely to be? Is having a lot of body hair a dominant or recessive trait, or are our kids likely to be somewhere between us in hairiness?
A volunteer I used to work with had a sweet van dyke. It was a light blonde and as weird as it was… every coupld of months when she’d wax it off… the first time I’d see her would freak me out more. She was a very “It’s Pat!” looking woman anyway so the facial hair didn’t help.
An older lady I work with now always wears a giant wide brimmed hat. She took it off once and I could see her patchy stringy white mustache.
I met a young lady last month who had a goatee. I was quite fascinated by her - pretty young lady, nice figure, etc. With a black goatee. By the end of the conference I’d gotten a bit more used to it. It must be kinda fun for her, to walk into the room and make people freeze up. Or puke, as in Quasi’s case.
Speaking of facial hair (dark-haired, light-skinned brunette here - unbleached, I have facial hair teenage boys would envy), whenever I wax my mustache off, my upper lip tingles in an unpleasant way until the hair grows back in. Anybody have any idea what that’s all about? Would it stop if I waxed more often?
And peri-menopause is great - just when you thought you had all the facial hair you needed…
Yeah, I’ve got the menopausal increase in facial hair. To go with it, however, my arm and leg hair has decreased considerably. I used to have to shave my legs several inches above my knees; now I only have to shave below the knees, if I even bother at all – it takes several weeks before it’s even noticeable. My face, however, is a different story. I fight a constant battle against all the hair that keeps trying to appear. I haven’t let it get the upper hand yet, and don’t plan to, and I truly don’t understand women who let the hairs just grow away.
I recently was waited on in the bookstore by a young woman – I’d say almost definitely no older than 25, maybe under 20 – who had pale skin, waist-length gorgeous black hair – and a black mustache. It was really unfortunate. She was such a pretty girl, but I could not keep my eyes off her mustache.
I’ve read that in Spain a lot of facial hair above the lip of a female is not considered a distraction at all.
The very fact that so many women have hairs growing in “strange” places may indicate that it isn’t so unusual after all. People are used to seeing images in magazine with body hair digitally removed. And they’re used to seeing people who have had superfluous hair permanently removed.
Remember that gorgeous redhead from the Forties and Fifties – Rita Hayworth? She was a brunette with an unattractive hairline and the usual amount of facial hair for someone of Spanish descent. Someone came up with the idea of removing hair around her forehead to open up her face. They made her a redhead, removed other facial hair and she looked like a different person. If you want to see what she looked like before, I believe the name of one of her early movies is Blood and Sand. She was already a beautiful woman.
It’s so much a matter of what you get used to. If beards make you throw up, why don’t they make you throw up when you see them on a man? It’s all in the head. But I do understand it.
Why is it not okay for her to be okay?
I used to have a long thin but strong gray hair they grew out of the lobe of my ear. It was very hard to see and often I wouldn’t notice it until it got about four or five inches long. I’m short and short-waisted. So when I was sitting behind my desk at school, I could easily hide almost everything besides upper arms, shoulders and head if I wanted to slouch a little. I used to like to rest my hand so that I could pull on that long gray hair and make my ear lobe dance without my students seeing how I was doing it. I would only do if for a couple of seconds when I knew a student was looking – just long enough to make him wonder if he had imagined it. Give up my ear hair? Never!
I’m a dark haired Hispanic chick. Waxing is a must. There’s no way I’m going around with a mustache. It is very, very fine hair, but it’s dark so it’s gotta go.
I shave all the way up my arms also.
The women I’ve seen with excess facial hair don’t look like Anna Magnani. There’s a difference between a fuzzy little moustache on a dark-skinned Italian woman and long bristly chin hairs on Aunt Mabel.
I have a question. If you have unwanted hair, and you don’t want to shave, why do you pay some waxer a lot of money to painfully yank it out? Don’t you know duct tape is cheaper? Don’t you have the courage to yank it out yourself?
I can see paying somebody for a very uncomfortable service if there is some skill involved, but here it’s just stick, press, grit your teeth, and yank. Screaming is optional, no matter who does the yanking. You are not paying for a relaxing experience, it’s all suspense and pain.
I’ve used Nad’s and several other brands of wax that you can buy at Walmart. - works fine for me. I wouldn’t pay someone to do it for me.
I’ve tried depilatories but they irritate my skin. For me, waxing is the best option.
It’s not just stick, press, yank and scream though. There is a technique. If the skin is pulled tight it wont hurt (or will hurt a whole lot less) and the same goes for pulling the hair out in the direction it can go. Both of those things are pretty hard to do when you’re waxing yourself.
Also, there are spots a person can’t reach on their own body to effectively wax.
I agree with DiosaBellissima. There’s definitely some skill involved. I let Mr Johnson assist me once.with the parts that I couldn’t reach (on my lower back. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit. That damn dark body hair!). Where he waxed was bumpy for about 2 weeks. I didn’t have any problems with the areas I did.
Nah, this was true when Washington Irving came to visit and almost fainted at the sight of all those gorgeous brunettes with what was, to his English sensibility, pretty much a Drill Sergeant’s moustache but it’s not true any more.
It’s true that many of us, because we wax, will sometimes go for a few days with more lip hair than would be considered seemly elsewhere because dang it, when we noticed it was That Time again it was a Tuesday and we don’t do our Long Drawn Beauty Stuff until Saturday.
I have lots of hair on my forearms too, fine but black. Mom finds it completely repulsive but in general it’s considered ok; so, while I accepted washing my legs and other assorted bitsies as part of “woman stuff”, I refused to do my arms for years. When I finally accepted it, it came with a caveat: “if I hate it, I’m not doing it again, since it doesn’t bother me and most people don’t even notice.”
I did hate it. I’m used to having that barrier between my arms and the world and those 3 months until it went back to something resembling normalcy blew goats. Not waxing my arms ever again.
