As an intro, I’d like to comment that I’ve taken on some satirical writing lately as I’ll be writing articles for Syndrome, an online magazine (‘just satire, just for women’) that’s well-known in Italy and has been introduced to North America recently. It raises awareness around women’s issues and matters in a fun, satirical way. The articles will be launched in November and I’ve been asked to initially write about body image, a “Mirror Talk” series of sorts — I’m super excited about it! (the below blog article will eventually be on it).

Satirical writing calls for the use of irony, sarcasm and exaggeration. I still plan to write other articles without the full use of satire, but I’d love to hear what you think about it versus my previous approach.

Finally, not to leave any men out (it’s not for the faint-hearted), my article does focus on a phenomenon that occurs for most women, but I’m sure men can relate through their experience of back, nose and ear hair sprouting with age.

Enjoy!

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A couple years ago, my mom was telling me a story when she stopped mid-sentence and said, “It’s time you needed one of these, follow me.” I felt like I was eleven again, after telling her I had discovered blood in my underwear and she had led me to the drawer where she kept the pads, using those exact same words. Baffled, I followed her.

She led me into her bedroom and, as though in preparation for dental surgery, she sat me down in a reclining chair positioned strategically between her dresser and a large window that lets in ample sunlight. She dramatically unveiled a collection of tools on her dresser, all meticulously placed upon a white cotton handkerchief: various pairs of tweezers (one with a curious curved tip), folded tissues, a tiny bottle of tea tree oil and a woodpile-like stack of cotton swabs. I looked suspiciously around for a needle, drill, perhaps a collection of teeth.

“You have a chin hair,” she said with a look of concern on her face while peering back and forth between the tweezers and my chin, apparently deciding upon the best fit. I suddenly felt vulnerable, like when I was a young girl and had decided to show her my sudden growth of pubic hair, not knowing if I had grown an old-growth forest or a sparse meadow. But unlike my pubic region, my chin was exposed, not able to hide behind a Fruit of the Loom veil. Would I need the curved tip tweezers for my first chin hair? Were there more than one? Would they come on as abruptly as my pubic hair had? Were chin hairs common for forty-year-olds?

“Oh?” I said, trying to keep the sound of panic out of my cracking voice as I grazed my fingers along my chin. There it was, jutting out like a stiff piece of straw from an ornamental lawn. Back and forth, back and forth my fingers went over the intrusive hair. What I was unaware of only seconds before suddenly felt like a skyscraper growing on my face. Without warning, I felt an urgency to rid of it as I would a foot cramp striking abruptly in the middle of the night. I pinched at it between my fingernails and gave it quick, tight tugs, but to no avail.

“That won’t work, it’s too thick,” my mom said. “Here take this.” She handed me the tweezers with the curved tip. The curved tip! What did this mean? “It’s fine, totally normal,” she said in a calming voice. “And I have something else that will make your life much easier.”

As she shuffled through her dresser drawer with a smile on her face, I felt a wave of relief spread through me. I realized that rather than a torturous dental office, she was introducing me to a secret lair with special secret woman things. Special secret woman things that held special secret importance for womankind, perhaps ones that could magically take care of my chin hair!

She handed me a mirror. My eyes scanned it for a mini laser device, a secret button, perhaps a hidden code. What secret would be opened to me that would rock my chin hair world?

“I can just do it in the bathroom mirror,” I said, standing up from the recliner while feigning ignorance to her obvious intention to let me in on a special secret woman thing.

But she grinned at me with a look of excitement, readying herself for the big reveal. “But the bathroom mirror can’t do this!” she said as she flipped the mirror like Vanna White flipping a letter on Wheel of Fortune (I know there are some of you out there, dear readers, who can remember when Vanna flipped the letters rather than touched them).

Of course, the magic was hidden on the other side of the mirror! I readied myself for some ‘mirror mirror on the wall’ badass queen magic.

“This side zooms in on things,” she said.

On things? Like the badass queen or a huntsman ready to slay my chin hair? I took the mirror from her and nonchalantly examined the magical side. But what my eyes beheld was merciless. My knees buckled at the sight. Oh cruel mother, why hadn’t you prepared me for what I was about to witness? This secret did not rock my world, it only rocked my body back and forth in an effort to self soothe. Just like my mom told me that having babies was a walk in the park, she neglected to tell me that looking at one’s face in a magnifying mirror in one’s forties would leave me in a fetal position beside her bed.

I felt like one of those people in the movies who’s about to die and sees images from their past flash through their mind as they head toward the light. Images of my childhood, my flawless skin—flash—images of my zitty, teenage skin—flash—images of my skin during pregnancy, again glowing and rosy as from childhood—flash—and now, an image of my forty-year-old skin with hairs, pores, peaks and valleys that I didn’t even know existed.

After regrouping myself, I bravely examined my face more closely. I was both fascinated and horrified that something I look at in the mirror almost daily had developed its own ecosystem. The magic mirror reflected a family of microscopic creatures, the mother putting a baby to bed in a very large pore that left room for triplets. It was like looking through a microscope for the first time and being creeped out that there were squiggly, globule-like things that our eyes couldn’t initially detect, squished in between the glass slides like a compressed boob during a mammogram.

“It’s a little shocking the first time, isn’t it?” my mom said, laughing at my reaction. Now I felt like we were having a ‘losing my virginity’ talk. Yup, both were shocking, but also a bit painful, a bit ugly, a bit awkward, and a lot disappointing.

But I realized, as I watched her laugh, that she wanted to witness the shock on my face that was likely on hers twenty years earlier. We were bonding over chin hairs. We could now clink them together like wine glasses, even high five with the extra long ones.

“Holy shit,” I said, not able to peel my eyes from the mirror. “I don’t want to look anymore, but I can’t help it!”

And then, I started. For what seemed like a long time, I began to pluck hairs on my face, turning this way and that, gasping each time I discovered a new one at each angle; the stark daylight was both my friend and my enemy. I marveled at the complete masochistic satisfaction I was deriving, especially from plucking the thick ones with roots like turnips. I even ventured to my upper lip (pardon? no, it is not a moustache, I am not a man) and realized that I was sorely mistaken when I thought it was under control after a couple years of waxing.

And so started my plucking era; I seized it with a vengeance like an artist who slaps inspiration onto multiple canvases a day. I compulsively honed my tweezing skills on my husband’s ears, my teenage daughter’s eyebrows, off-coloured threads of my shower mat, a hair from my neighbour’s dog’s furry mole, and even a small patch of my lawn.

I also discovered that there was yet one more magic mirror: the rearview mirror of my vehicle. Even after believing I had gotten every single rogue hair on my face, my rearview mirror magically revealed several that I had missed, like the true friend who discretely points out the booger in her friend’s nose that everyone else stared at, grossed out, but feeling too awkward to say something. I love my loyal rearview mirror; in my will, there is enough money left for it to buy a lifetime supply of tree air fresheners.

Now, I know there are things like electrolysis if I really wanted to get serious about it, but so far, I’m managing well with tweezers (I can hear you fuzzy-chinned cynics out there chuckling at my words ‘so far’). And yes, I purchased a magnifying mirror after the unexpected love affair with my rearview mirror. I would totally get why you would not want to buy one after reading about my experience. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Or perhaps you’d prefer to cultivate your chin hairs for the greater good of, say, donating them to hummingbirds for their nests—all the power to you.

But I’ve actually gotten used to seeing not only my hairs, but my skin close up too; possibly, it may have brought me to a further acceptance that yes, my skin is aging. It’s aging. Do I like that it’s aging? No, I don’t, but I’m okay with it. I figure that getting used to my aging face is like a sweater that’s itchy at first, but if worn a lot, the itchy parts get worn down into something soft and comfortable… and even beautiful.

Perhaps better yet, it’s something we can connect with other women on, like we might connect on a preference for merlot versus Malbec. As an example, my close group of girlfriends from high school have started to gather every summer in our hometown, and when I arrived last year, the first thing one of them anxiously said was, “Nic, do you have to pluck hairs on your chin?”

Hallelujah! I assumed, with my early menopause, that it was just me—just as we had all feared being either the first or last one to get our period in our earlier years.

“Totally!” I said, pulling my bottle of vodka from the back of my minivan while fighting the sudden urge to clunk chins with her rather than give a high five.
She replied excitedly, “Omigod, thank you! Apparently I was asking the wrong women here!”

So here I am, connecting with you, normalizing we pluckers of chin hairs. And if you’re not a chin hair harvester, then perhaps you’re an arm jiggler, a wrinkle warrior, an age spot spotter, a cellulite sprouter or a ‘look how low my boobs can go’er. Whichever you are, if you’ve shoved it down into your bottle of shame alongside the butt acne you had as a teenager, then pull the cork out, let it breathe, bring it on out, and look at it closely (not necessarily magnifying mirror closely, but you can if you’re feeling brave)—you might just find that once it gets some oxygen, it will become a part of you that makes you more robust and more accepting of what is.

And you might just find yourself in a conversation with girlfriends that starts with “Do you have to pluck chin hairs?” and ends with some sharing that they pluck big toe and nipple hairs too… until someone shouts, “Stop, too much information!” Fair enough, I’ll stop there.

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I’d love to hear any comments you may have. And if you enjoyed this, please share!

Thanks to Mari Lezhava on Unsplash for the cover photo.