Shaving myths

[damian]

Originally Posted by lavender blue

I had my eyebrows 'tidied up' using a razor during a makeup session once

I read that at first as "during a make-out session".

If I don't shave my face, I have what most people would call a beard within 10 days or so. Not just rough stubble, but full on, whiskery beard.

My body hair is a different story. I shave an area before getting a tattoo and it doesn't grow back for ages. When I had my knee rebuilt recently, I had a cast on for weeks. My leg hair on that leg was thick and black. I had to shave both legs because it looked ridiculous. Looked like I got stuck during transformation into a werewolf.

[Der Induktionator]

Originally Posted by damian

... Looked like I got stuck during transformation into a werewolf.

I've had that happen to me. Every ~27 days, full moon, and I go yowl at it for a while. That's where I get stuck. Right there.

[Esprise Me]

The hair on my arms and thighs is fine and blonde, so I leave my arms alone and often just shave my lower legs, where the hair gets a bit darker. But I did shave my arms once or twice when I was younger, out of some misguided sense that any body hair at all was unattractive. While the hair is normally so soft and sparse you can hardly feel it, two days after I shaved I had noticeable stubble that felt rather rough. The change wasn't permanent, of course; once the hair grew out it returned to its usual texture. It makes sense, though. An uncut hair tapers naturally from a thick base to a narrow tip; cut hair has blunt ends. Longer hairs will be more flexible; shorter hairs will be stiffer due to a higher width-to-length ratio. Also, when people start removing hair, it's often because that hair is already in the process of becoming thicker and darker. I started shaving my legs the summer before sixth grade, when all my body hair was still very fine and childlike. (I wanted to shave because my friends were shaving. Duh!) Over the next few years, puberty happened, and I could see people easily confusing correlation with causation. Thing is, I didn't shave my bikini area--that hadn't yet become fashionable--and that hair changed much more dramatically than the hair I was shaving.