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Facial Hair: The Last Taboo in Women's Beauty?


Facial Hair: The Last Taboo in Women's Beauty?

The day before Rosemary Greenwood's first wedding, in 1984, she sat in her backyard in the gleaming sun with a mirror and tweezers. For over two hours she plucked hairs off her face. "Not the way most brides spend the day before their wedding," said Greenwood, 69. She had often considered bringing up her struggles with her facial hair with friends, but never mustered the courage. "Pretending that none of us had this issue, which of course was ridiculous. The silence made it shameful."

That sense of shame is more common than one might think. Though studies suggest that almost half of all women will grow facial hair at some point in their lives, visible facial hair, whether that be a few bristles on a chin, a dark mustache or unruly eyebrows that meet in the middle, is not the norm culturally.

We continue to invent new and innovative ways to remove it: tiny intense pulsed light machines (IPL) that promise a smooth and shiny face; dermaplaning with the use of a spray powder that makes every last hair visible; and epilators, which are just as painful as they were in the 2000s.

While we have seen effective movements that have normalized women's body hair -- it has even shown up in razor advertisements -- women's facial hair remains mostly unseen and rarely discussed. Studies suggest that more than 80 percent of women are self-conscious about it and, according to a 2014 survey, three out of four American women ages 18 to 34 regularly removed it.

Could our rigidity around removing it ever change?

In a New York Times questionnaire, we asked female readers about their relationship with their facial hair. Almost 900 responded.

A Brief History

Women with facial hair have been documented throughout history, often in ways that make current attitudes seem modest. (Take, for example, Annie Jones, P.T. Barnum's bearded lady, who was billed in his circus as a "freak" -- a term Jones protested.) As explored in "Plucked: A History of Hair Removal," a book by the Bates College professor Rebecca Herzig, Western scientists in the 19th century used female facial hair to reinforce the notion of white supremacy. It was pathologized and linked to madness, degeneracy and "inferior races."

More recent scholarship, like "The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair," edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, a professor at the department of English literature at the University of Reading, highlights the pressures women often face to conform to particular beauty standards under a patriarchal society. By the 20th century, the number of women regularly removing body or facial hair soared, and today, according to multiple studies, almost all women remove it in some form during their lives.

For her book "Unshaved: Resistance and Removal in Women's Body Hair Politic," Breanne Fahs, a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, interviewed many women who embraced their pubic, underarm and leg hair, titling them "body hair rebels." But, she added, facial hair was the "limit of where they could rebel."

"That's really telling, right?" she said.

One respondent to the Times questionnaire, Claire Minter, 25, went a step further: "Women, I think, kind of have different standards for each other about what is womanly and what is modern and I definitely could see facial hair being kind of the next frontier."

Hormones Are a Factor

Facial hair on women is often associated with polycystic ovary syndrome, a complex hormonal disorder that affects 8 to 12 percent of "reproductive-aged" women worldwide and can cause excess facial or body hair growth. Women with PCOS sometimes respond to testosterone, which all women have, in a specific way. "The testosterone they have is free to run amok, and cause excess hair growth," said Dr. Helena Teede, an endocrinologist at Monash University in Australia.

Shame can extend beyond the hair itself to its removal, whether that's plucking, shaving, waxing, threading, IPL, laser or electrolysis.

"The thought of actually shaving sickens me and makes me want to cry," said another respondent, Sheryl Martinez, 67. "I must have had 100 electrolysis sessions in the last 40 years, which I have found helpful but far from permanent. I schedule these appointments 'secretly' from my husband because of my embarrassment."

While laser hair removal can significantly reduce hair growth for most people, electrolysis, which dates back to the 19th century, is the only permanent form of hair removal, but can be ineffective because of hormonal shifts causing new hair growth.

A Disproportionate Burden

There is statistical evidence that American women of particular races and ethnicities have more facial hair. Women of South Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Black and Mediterranean descent have been shown to grow more visible facial hair than women of some other backgrounds -- possibly because markers like serum testosterone vary by ethnicity -- without necessarily having a hormonal disorder.

Having facial hair as a member of a minority group can feel particularly hard growing up. "As a young girl who was only one of two Indians in her mainly white school it was devastating when peers would laugh and bring attention to my 'mustache.' I was already different enough," said Radhika Moolgavkar, 48. Though she still hates her mustache, she added that her two daughters, 15 and 17, are "totally comfortable" with their facial hair (as is she).

For many, difficulties start young. Elizabeth Dollhopf-Brown, 46, started growing facial hair at 12. "It was awful. I was called horrible names through high school and would find pictures in my locker with me as a gorilla," she said.

From childhood, facial hair can be a crucial part of gender expression for L.G.B.T.Q. people, but also a cause of discomfort and dysphoria. "As a transgender woman I had to undergo many hours of laser and electrolysis to remove facial hair," said Adin Seskin, 55. "Good riddance."

Others said they had found a connection to their cultures through their facial hair. "I have a mustache, though it's not a bushy one. I love it. It's who I am as a Latina," said Sylvia Hays, 66. "All the women in my family have a mustache, so at an early age, I accepted it as being part of our culture, of our look, our DNA. When I was in my 30s, a male friend told me he found it sexy."

Aging Plays a Role

Many women start struggling with new facial hair growth later in life, or during menopause. Some said they had made friends or relatives promise to pluck their hairs for them if they ever ended up in a hospital or a care facility. "We made a pact: When we were old and maybe unable to care for ourselves, each of us would make sure that hairy ugliness wasn't noticeable on the other," said Debbie Russell, 68.

But there is the possibility of finding peace with age, too. "To me, my facial hair feels like a part of my gender identity, and since menopause I have a little goatee now, which I shave," said Mitzi Cowell, 60, "but I dream of the day when I can just grow it out, braid it."

What's Next?

This century, a shift of sorts has emerged around the norms of women's bodies. There have been multiple movements, such as "Januhairy," which encouraged women to grow their body hair, including facial hair, during the month of January (the community's official Instagram account has 42,000 followers). "Rosalie," A 2023 French film that had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, featured a bearded female protagonist. "I invented the story of a young woman who frees herself by embracing her beard," said the film's director, Stéphanie di Gusto. "With Rosalie's beard, I wanted to reinvent femininity."

While Professor Fahs acknowledges that "expectations of conformity are very strong," being embarrassed or having shame around facial hair is not a given. Women have found outlets for self-expression among feminist and L.G.B.T.Q. communities where they feel more comfortable growing and showing their facial hair.

These shifts have been slow, but are changing the way some women see femininity. "I've come to realize that facial hair is just as much a part of being a woman as it is being a man," Minter said.

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