Hairy

I've got a real love-hate relationship with shaving.

When I was a preteen, I saw my Dad shaving with his electric shaver, and thought it would be neat to have enough peach fuzz to need my own (I was one of those boys that want to be "just like Dad"; whatever gender confusion I may have had was buried pretty deeply at that point). Then I got hit by the "body hair fairy", and I quickly discovered how much of a hassle it can all be.

For starters, I've got a LOT of hair. Arms, legs, chest, back, and of course on my face. Way more hair than any genetic female would ever have, and enough that people notice when I shave it. For my face & legs, that's fine... guys can do that, especially if they're cyclists (I am). But everything else? Arms, chest, back, shoulders, armpits...? When that hair goes missing, people tend to ask questions I'd rather avoid.

So, I shave what I can safely shave in our culture without raising eyebrows. Not the best, but I can live with it for now.

Unfortunately, even for the places I feel free to shave, I have issues. I've always had super sensitive skin, which makes using a blade of any kind tricky — I tend to cut myself, a LOT. Plus, my face gets pretty irritated if I shave on anything approaching a regular basis (like daily). And as if that isn't enough, my hair grows in at a weird angle, so that even the closest, smoothest electric shaver leaves me with a Homer Simpson-style 5 o' clock shadow. Sad face! :(

It's taken me years to figure out how to deal with this. For a while I tried growing a goatee, because it seemed like it would be less of a daily hassle. I was also in a phase of my life when I was trying to deny my feminine side, and I thought having a beard would make my GID feelings weaker, or at the very least easier to ignore. I quickly found that I was wrong in both cases: it took even more effort to keep a goatee neatly trimmed, and after a few days the prickliness would really start to bug me (and my wife, for that matter), so I'd end up shaving it all off, and the feelings would come roaring back.

More often than not, then, I end up being lazy and looking like a less-masculine George Michael, with a day or two's worth of shadow. Yuck.

Honestly, if electrolysis / laser hair removal weren't so expensive and time-consuming, I'd have probably done my face and legs already. Le sigh.

Ah, yes, my legs. I've been shaving them on and off for years. Once, early on in our marriage, my wife commented on how sexy my legs would look if they were shaved. So that night I took the opportunity to shave them... slowly, and with several painful nicks, but I rather liked the results (my girlish feelings were just reawakening after being dormant for most of my college years). I loved their smooth silkiness, and the way my pants fabric felt slipping over them when I walked was absolutely delicious. My sweetheart was surprised when she saw what I'd done the next morning — I think her original comment was just playful and not really serious — but if I remember right, she liked them. (I was riding my bike back and forth a lot to college classes at the time, so my calves were pretty toned). But shaving my legs was so time consuming, not to mention hard for me to explain, so I'd go months or even years without doing anything about them.

Fast-forward to last year. I've spent the last few years exercising on my lunch break at work a couple of times a week, usually just power-walking or some light weight training in the gym in my building. Then I had the brilliant idea to bring my bike to work and leave it in a corner, so I could RIDE on my lunch breaks instead. It's easier on my bad knees, and I can go further and burn more calories in the same amount of time... win-win! Plus, as a serious cyclist, I finally had a justifiable reason to shave my legs on a regular basis... make that win-win-WIN! I've got my own Venus shaver for the job so I don't mess up my wife's blades, and she's come to accept my doing it.

I've kept my legs clean-shaven pretty much constantly since then. Doing maintenance shaves maybe once or twice a week is enough to keep them soft, smooth, and comfy. I still wish there was a better way besides shaving to get my face and legs to where I want them, and wish I could follow suit with the rest of my body, but for right now, this feels like a good compromise between sasquatch and naked mole rat, and makes me feel just a little bit more like myself.