By Cheryl Wischhover
One day, a friend of mine joked that a true test of friendship is the person who visits you in the hospital when you’re in a coma to pluck all your errant facial hairs. (This conversation was pre-Covid. It obviously feels darker now.)
All kidding aside, plenty of people who will eventually experience menopause have visible hair on their faces their whole lives due to genetics or medical conditions. But come pregnancy (to a certain extent) and then perimenopause (where things really start sprouting), many more join the ranks of the facially hirsute to varying degrees. Like everything else that happens during this time of life, it’s due to shifting hormones.
Estrogen and testosterone both play a part in our various reproductive functions during puberty and adulthood, but the balance shifts during perimenopause, says Dr. Karyn Eilber, a urologist at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles who has an interest in menopause and its various physical manifestations. As estrogen decreases, the ratio skews and testosterone becomes functionally more active, which can result in potentially less hair on your head and more on other places like your upper lip and chin, nipples, and belly. The timing is unpredictable, but it can start in your late 30s or early 40s.
“It depends on how sensitive you are to estrogen, because even if it hasn’t declined a lot, you can still have effects,” says Dr. Eilber.
I’m blond-ish and light skinned, and I started noticing errant darker hairs on my face in my mid-40s. I’m not alone here. “I will see many patients today with this complaint. It’s so common,” says Dr. Michelle Henry, a New York City-based dermatologist.
Really, we should just normalize our facial hair! But let’s acknowledge it may take a few years — or generations — for that to happen, so if you’re interested in minimizing it or getting rid of it, please read on.
Shaving/Waxing:
Back in 2017, I wrote about my devotion to the Finishing Touch Flawless hair remover ($12.90) and I am still using the same unit four years later, though I’ve replaced the head a few times. (You can and should purchase replacement heads so it doesn’t dull and get filthy.) It’s a mini face razor that cleans up the hairs. Yes, they grow back. No, they don’t grow back coarser or more abundantly. I love the thing.
You can go the old-fashioned route and pluck or wax, but Dr. Henry doesn’t recommend this. There’s a risk of irritation, ingrown hairs, and hyperpigmentation. “If you’re someone who’s prone to hyperpigmentation, that [can] end up being a larger problem than the actual hair itself,” she says.
BUT: If you do feel the need to occasionally pluck, Tweezerman slant tweezers ($23) are the OG (the company even offers free sharpening and maintenance). For wax strips, try Flamingo’s ($9.99 for 20). If you’ve never waxed before, definitely test it on a small area first to see how your skin reacts.
Dr. Henry is a much bigger fan of dermaplaning, a type of precision shaving done with a sterile, surgical razor and typically performed by an esthetician. It’s a twofer treatment, because it removes hair as well as exfoliates, improving skin texture. A few years ago, an inevitable beauty hack (remember these?) made the rounds of the internet, with people recommending these Dorco Tinkle ($4.90 for 6) eyebrow razors for at-home dermaplaning. There is also a pink DTC start-up version, called Jill ($8). Use these at your own risk, says Dr. Henry, who likes the Dermaflash at-home electric tool for dermaplaning, though it’s much pricier at $199. But if you’re interested in safe exfoliation plus nixing hairs, it may be a good option for you.
Bleaching/Vaniqa:
I’m lumping these two together only because they are both things that get applied topically and both are meh options. Bleaching obviously will just lighten the hair, not remove it. Sally Hansen’s ($7.29) is a dependable workhorse, but again, test a very small area first to be sure you don’t have a reaction to it.
Vaniqa ($600-$800 per year) is a prescription cream that slows hair growth at the root, but you need to use it forever and will still likely require other hair removal modalities. It also has potential side effects like acne and folliculitis, or bumps where the hair grows. “I often tell my patients it’s a larger cost over the course of your life and to do something like laser hair removal instead,” says Dr. Henry.
Electrolysis/Laser:
If you truly can’t deal and want the hair gone, you’ll need to commit to more intensive, expensive treatments. Laser hair removal works well for people with lighter skin and darker hair — a contrast is best. “The darker the skin, the more the laser gets ‘confused’ between what is hair and what is skin. And that’s when we can get burns,” says Dr. Henry. That doesn’t mean if you have darker skin that you can’t get laser hair removal, but Dr. Henry calls it “advanced laser surgery” requiring an experienced doctor who knows the safe laser wavelength to use to prevent injury. The best way to do this is to go to a dermatologist with this specific experience. Go for a consult first and ask questions about the physician’s experience with your skin tone, read reviews (RealSelfs a great site for brutally honest doctor reviews and before/after photos for aesthetic treatments), and go to a reputable practitioner — read about their board certifications and relevant experience. This is not the time to go to a random laser hair removal place in a strip mall somewhere.
Laser hair removal for a small area like above the lip can cost anywhere from $50 to $400 per treatment, depending on where you live and how complex the treatment is. You’ll generally need six to eight treatments four to six weeks apart. You may need maintenance treatments years in the future, but if hair does grow back it tends to be lighter and more sparse.
Finally, there is electrolysis, Dr. Henry’s favorite hair removal treatment. “Electrolysis is basically threading a little [probe under the surface of the skin] and using heat energy to destroy the follicle. It’s tedious, but it works. And it works in all hair types because it’s kind of colorblind,” she says. You’ll be given a numbing cream before the treatment to blunt a stinging, pricking feeling. Electrolysis requires several treatments spread out over a few months, and averages about $500 for a full course of treatment, though that number varies greatly.
You may never need or want any of this. But if you do, the information is here for you — or for your designated hospital facial hair doula.
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