have you ever had your facial hair burned off?

my journey through electrolysis and laser hair treatment

I am not a hair removal specialist I can assure you of that. I can share my journey only but if hair removal is something you are interested in, you should consult a laser hair technician or electrologist to get the best information for a plan that will work best for your face and facial hair type or for whatever hair removal type you have.

But when you look at this pretty face you do need to acknowledge the hours of lived experience I have getting my hair taken out of it in a variety of ways. I am still in this, after hours and hours and hours, I am not yet done, but this is a story I like to tell because it helps me remind myself I CAN DO THIS!

So a bit about my years prior to social transition and even a bit before medical transition.

I loved my beard. I thought I looked amazing in a beard. I even though I looked quite magnificent in a mustache. In fact, you would almost never ever ever see me with a shaved face. I would say on average I shaved my face fully about two or three times a year. Thinking about this now, a lot of this had to do with how much I disliked the look of my face and the shape of my face in general and wearing a beard gave me the greatest opportunity to hide this.

My facial hair was also my makeup in a way. I didn’t think makeup was meant for me so I used a big beard to show my face in different ways. Even when beginning to socially transition, I had a mustache and facial hair in my early days and put glitter in it and came up with cute lipstick and mustache looks. Eventually, my facial hair started to not feel right for me though and I looked into how to get rid of it.

I had started with electrolysis on my neck. I did maybe 25 hours worth of this to get rid of it all and it felt great and then I just couldn’t do more at the time. It was expensive and time consuming and it hurt. I needed a break. But my hormone replacement journey and the way my body was changing really had me wanting to do more electrolysis again and getting ready to remove all of it again and completing as much a pain tolerance and funds would allow.

The things about my androgen blockers (the stuff that keeps testosterone from building up in me) and estrogen and all my medication is that for all the back hair it removes and body hair it thins significantly, it does not touch the hair on my face. This wasn’t a surprise to me, I knew this would be the case, I was never led to believe otherwise.

I have done both laser and electrolysis and when I talk about the pain of electrolysis I do often get people suggesting I try laser hair removal. I promise you that I have done both. I promise you that both of them are needed for a face like mine and that for many people a combination might be needed.

I started my electrolysis journey even before going on HRT. But because of pain and cost reasons, I had stopped my electrolysis for a bit. Electrolysis and other hair removal processes are definitely expensive and this is yet another reason why I do not want to suggest that anything is ever essential to complete in order to have a valid trans journey.

A bit about what each of laser and electrolysis does first, based on my internet research (you know the drawbacks of internet research):

The laser emits a beam of light, which the pigment (color) in your hair absorbs. Over time, this can destroy the hair follicle, so the hair cannot grow back. Laser hair removal won’t work on blonde, white, gray, or red hair because lasers cannot effectively target light-colored hair.

In electrolysis, this method sends an electrical current through a hair follicle, which will damage the follicle and prevent hair from growing. Because hair grows in cycles, it takes several sessions to get permanent hair removal.

At this point, I’m on the electrolysis portion of my hair removal journey and for my face specifically. Will there be other places down the road? Maybe—-it is needed as preparations for certain surgeries. But for today I’m just going to focus on my face because I know I’m doing that.

Electrolysis hurts, there is just no other way for me to say it. I do not enjoy it in any way. I do not find the same joy leaving an electrolysis session that I do leaving a tattoo session because the mental energy it takes to get through a hair removal session is far far greater.

It is a reminder that I am going through something that is yes important to my own gender expression journey, but is also something that should not be so important to people seeing me as a transfeminine person. People should not look at facial hair and make a call about one’s gender and yet we do this every day with everybody. It is one of the main things we use to determine whether we address someone as he or she or sir or ma’am. It’s a very gender-y thing and it’s something I have a hard time separating myself. It's something that is so individual and I spend my entire session thinking about this on top of the yucky physical pain. None of these things leads to the same kind of joy that an I love my cats tattoo does.

An electrolysis session is also quite a visceral one for me. You can hear things and feel things and smell things and see a bright light in your eyes when you are electrocuting your hair. To put it lightly, it is a sensory overload to go through a session of any length. It is a real mental game to try and tune out all of these things at once. I roll a fidget toy over my fingers from the time we start until the bell goes off that the machine has hit our time limit. I count the number of songs that play so I have an idea how much time is left in the session. Sometimes I count the individual currents that get sent through. I do this on days the numbing cream has worked well enough to allow me to focus on that. Sometimes the focus is on how many individual hairs instead of the zaps, imagining them leaving my face. No matter the game I play in my head it’s always with the intention of getting through 30 minutes or half an hour of a session.

Electrolysis, because of it’s rather aggressive nature of hair removal, can also leave some redness post session. It does go away after a few days and lots of aloe applications but there is no question I spend some time looking a little red and swollen, particularly when I get upper or lower lips done. Buttttt, this also gives me some pretty sweet looking lips from time to time, and with the right lipstick, damn do I ever look good.

Walking around with hair at the length you need to be able to have it done can be uncomfortable. It is for me for sure. So to get to the stage to remove gender dysphoria I need to walk around with gender dysphoria. This is one of the things about electrolysis that does not happen with laser treatments. For my treatments you need to have long enough hair to be able to tweeze out of there after it’s been treated, for laser, I had to go in there with a very freshly shaved face. This is one treatment area where there was a big difference. However, as I’m about to explain, you’ll see there are drawbacks with laser that led me to needing to go with electrolysis for long term removal.

Laser was also promising and I am very glad I went through the sessions I did on my face because it did a very good job of thinning out the existing brown hairs I had on my face. These sessions were far far shorter, the numbing cream did a far more substantial job of dulling the pain, and there was next to no sign that I went through a session following one.

In the end, it just wasn’t the end result needed for an older greying person like me. I still had too many white and grey and red hairs left that would require electrolysis to remove forever. Looking back, the laser first, and electrolysis session next, feels like a great way to manage it if this is a cost you can manage. You do need fewer laser treatments to get through complete treatment than you need electrolysis, but the per session cost is more expensive. There is a great chance that this could be something that works for you though so again if hair removal is something you’re looking to do, don’t use my journey as a complete guide! Check it out and see if it’s something that might work for you.

Numbing cream, oh my goodness numbing cream. I don’t know where I would be at this stage in my hair removal journey without numbing cream. I currently use Zensa and I also use tattoo numbing cream. The tattoo numbing cream works way better for me, there is no doubt. I put it on hours before a session, cover it with plastic wrap and hope it will fulfill its numbing role as best as it possibly can.

I don’t want to think about going through a session without numbing cream because even with it, these don’t feel great. Upper lip sessions are particularly the worst and I guess this cream works there but I’m not completely positive. I would suggest talking with whoever you choose to work with about what they suggest. Maybe they have a magical cream that works better than anything I have ever worked with, but I do not suggest going into a session without anything. My goodness do not try and tough it out. You deserve gentleness and compassion throughout this. Numbing cream is that.

Generally, the need to remove hair is one I want to reinforce as my own choice in this instance. If it is not your journey for any number of reasons, I want to remind you how damn beautiful body hair is. Hair on any part of the body belongs where it grows and the decision to remove it should be based on that individuals choice to do so.

I get cis women with polcystic ovary syndrome talking to me about their own treatments often. I have people, both trans and cis asking about the process because they have hair in areas where they would rather not have hair and wondering what the process I am going through is like. There is so much stigma around hair, particularly for feminine presenting people.

The idea that society has made it more feminine to not have hair on faces or chests or legs or arms is a crappy one. It is not valid, it is make believe. Women and non binary people with beards and breasts and legs and armpits covered in hair are gorgeous and feminine and in no way does removing hair make them moreso.

I remind myself of this at every hair removal opportunity whether it is a permanent one like electrolysis or a temporary one like shaving my legs. I think about how what I am doing is for me and how I can make my current situation for specifically for me. Thinking about smooth legs being for me only. Thinking about removing a beard that I used to really like being for me only. Thinking about how I will apply makeup to these spaces in the future.

For me, probably 55 hours into clearing my neck and face with electrolysis and laser and only now getting close to one full clearance and with at least the same amount of hours yet to go, before I’m finished, I’m reminded often that I’m making this choice for myself because of the discomfort I experience when I see facial hair on myself when I look in the mirror.

But there is always some reflection about what things would feel like if I hadn’t grown up experiencing gender the way I do. What if our standards for gender weren’t what they are? Would I still experience this the way I do? Would I want to hold my hands in front of my face on long hair electrolysis days? Would I be so worried you would misgender me if I had sparkles in a long beard?

In the end, there is a path for anyone who wants to get facial hair removal for any reason they want. There are roadblocks too. Accessibility is a barrier. Cost, trans specific care, providers in your area, pain tolerance are all things to think about with this and are all reasons why one might not be able to access care.

But if this is your path, you can manage through it, or so I continue to be told. Talk with professionals in your area about a plan that works for you and think about your long term plan. There is no quick route to permanent removal so find one that feels comfortable and safe for you.

And if you need it, hold my hand virtually and if you’re comfortable, let me hold yours too?