One of my most ridiculous monthly expenses when I think about it is going down the street
to a place where I hand some very nice women some money and they sit down and they take
some threads and they magically make all of my lady mustache and unibrow and excess eyebrow hair just disappear.
This week’s Ask Cristen question is coming
from someone who emailed anonymously and wants to know, ‘The big question is how many women
deal with facial hair issues and why is it so socially unacceptable? I feel like I constantly
have to remove it, even though sometimes when I let it grow, no one says anything about
it. Ever. Why all the pressure?!’ All caps. First a very quick science lesson. The facial
hair we’re talking about is not the vellus hair or the peach fuzz that all of our beautiful
faces are covered in. The visible thicker facial hair is technically called terminal
hair and terminal hair starts to grow around puberty. The follicles around our lady goatee
region tend to be more sensitive to testosterone and so that testosterone can come in and kick
out that peach fuzzy vellus hairs and bring in the more visible terminus hairs. And that
is how a lady mustache is born. And according to research conducted on behalf of the BBC
40% of women like yours truly naturally grow facial hair with varying degrees of thickness
and visibility. Two-thirds of that 40% of that 40% said that their facial hair made
them feel unfeminine. 40% of that 40% said their facial hair made it harder for them
to form relationships. Women who have to deal with their facial hair on more of a daily
basis are likelier to be among the very small percentage who have hirsutism or the much
larger group of the one in ten to one in twenty women who have polycystic ovarian syndrome
which causes our ovaries to overproduce androgens resulting in visible symptoms like excessive
hair growth, acne and weight gain. A 2013 study found that PCOS is the most common cause
of excessive female facial hair and those patients with PCOS reported facial hair as
the hardest thing to live with second only to PCOS-related infertility. On top of that
another study that talked to women with PCOS about how they feel about and deal with it
their excessive facial hair found that on average they spent 104 minutes every week
taming their facial hair and that it was a constant source of embarrassment and self-consciousness
in social settings leadint them to continually check themselves in mirrors and touch their
faces for signs of stubble coming in. Which leads to Anonymous’ big question of why?
Why can our facial hair make us feel so bad about ourselves? Well it doesn’t help that
various forms of female hairlessness are some of our oldest beauty standards. Because facial
hair is considered a male secondary sex trait its appearance has been coded as masculine.
And of course the appearance of anything masculine on a woman’s face thus deems as unfeminine
and thus unmarriageable. Or to quote 16th century Spanish physician Juan Huarte, ‘The
woman of average levels of coldness and moisture has a little bit of hair on her body but it’s
light and blonde. The woman who has much body and facial hair being of a more hot and dry
nature is also intelligent but is disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly, has a deep
voice and frequent infertility problems.’ And don’t be fooled because Dr. Huartes
are still around in the 20th century because that 2013 study I referenced earlier found
that when those women with PCOS go to the doctor their most common responses are like,
I don’t know just go home, lose some weight and shave or something. So maybe a first step
toward alleviating some of this facial hair free social pressure is for healthcare practitioners
to not ladystache shame their patients. This is also something we can all contribute to
by not judging people based on whether their facial hair presentation matches with what
you think their gender identity presentation should look like. And anonymous if you decide
what’s best for you and your facial hair I also suggest that you take inspiration from
Balpreet Kuar whose photo taken without her knowledge was initially a horrible internet
joke that she responded to in the kindest way saying first of all I’m not really embarrassed
by my facial hair because as a Sikh it’s part of my religion to not alter my body in
anyway and btws it’s my joy and happiness behind the face that matters a lot more to
me. So now I want to know from you. Have you ever been insecure about your facial hair
of any kind of body hair and if so what did you do about it? Let me know if in the comments
below. Thanks to everybody who watched and commented on last week’s Ask Cristen about
a bi-phobic boyfriend. And as always, ask me your questions so I can give you some answers.