We Have a 'Winner'
Haircuts and an update on last week's laser hair removal
dusts self off
As promised, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming. On Tuesday this week it was time for me to get my haircut refreshed (shout out to my stylist Tracy).
Haircuts are a big deal here in trans circles, because a lot of how we perceive someone’s gender comes directly from a haircut. I remember people being all up in arms about Sinead O’Connor shaving her head, and long-haired men are definitely viewed differently by society even today.
If you see a person from behind, you’re probably going to lean hard on their haircut when making a guess on their gender. As with quite a few things in my non-binary brain, my ideal haircut is one that’d make such a guess a little trickier. Being confusing to people is one of my transition goals in fact.
The inspiration for my current hair is none other than Spider-Gwen herself, as seen in the Spider-Verse movies. Her asymmetrical hair do gives off punky gender non-conforming vibes, and I love the idea that from one side it leans feminine and on the other it leans masculine.
Now, granted, it’s not the same exact haircut, and in my case a convenient patch of grey makes for the color contrast vs Gwen’s darker roots but as my hair grows out on one side and the asymmetry gets more and more stark, I love it more and more.
‘How long are you going to grow it out?’ interested people ask me.
‘I’ll let you know when I know,’ I tend to reply. I have no idea what is going to be ‘too long’ for me, but we aren’t there yet. I’ll know when it gets too long I expect!
I promised that I would provide an update on my laser hair removal (LHR) once the hairs started falling out, and this morning… we have a winner.
And what you might ask, is a ‘winner’?
If you look closely at where the arrow points, you’ll see a hair. At first glance that might not seem to be a surprising thing to see on a razor blade mid shave, but the key thing is that it is lying on top of the razor blade, instead of underneath it. No such hairs showed up on my razor yesterday and we only had the one today, but that’s about normal for the tenth day after LHR.
Nowadays, for most of the time between LHR sessions a quick electric shave will suffice, but as I hit day nine after LHR I start doing a wet shave in the morning precisely so I can enjoy seeing ‘winners’ show up.
This characteristic beauty, is sitting on top of the razor blade like that, because it wasn’t cut from my face. Rather, the blade nicked the hair, and pulled it out. If you look really closely (not at the photo above, I don’t think you can make it out there!) you can see the skin from the follicle that got cauterized stuck to the hair. Any hairs that show up on my razor like this? They’re done. Finished. Not coming back.
And every one of these that shows up on my razor over the next week or so feels like a victory. A win! My facial hair has been one of the main triggers of gender dysphoria, so seeing the fruits of last weeks labors is genuinely amazing. Every single one feels like progress, and at least when it comes to LHR I think we are very nearly done.
When the LHR isn’t yielding any more results I may shift to electrolysis depending on how many stubborn hairs remain. The LHR won’t do anything about my grey hairs, but generally those don’t bother me, so I remain unsure about that. Needless to say if I do switch, I’ll share those experiences too.
It’s been a tiring week (I know I know, Lemon it’s Thursday, whatever), but my passport is still valid and that is a big relief for me. Granted, I’d still feel that my gender was valid regardless what had happened there, but not having any valid travel documents when most of my family live overseas would add to my anxiety and we really don’t want that. Maybe I’ll share more about anxiety another time, but I am genuinely doing notably better than I was doing for the majority of 2024. For now though, that’s been me and my hair!