Ladies, if you’re not keeping tweezers in your car you’re missing out on one of life’s greatest hacks.
You know those chin hairs? The ones that seem to lie dormant for weeks and then sprout three metres overnight? You will never find better light for chin-hair plucking than in the mirror of your car’s visor in the celestial brilliance of the sun. It’s time to treat yourself to driving tweezers.
For the longest time, I had three reliable chin hairs. Three fairly inconspicuous, spiky, dark intruders that had almost become dear friends to me, black and thick and curiously robust for something so virgin.
They’re hardy, the isolated chin hairs of a woman. Starting in our late 20s, we begin sprouting at least one sequoia of a bristle, and it will return as regularly as clockwork, bringing a friend with it every few years. If only other facial hair could be so resilient. The poor girls who overplucked their eyebrows in the 1990s and early 2000s were left looking permanently like Christina Aguilera in her Dirrty era (minus the arseless chaps), while their chin hairs will return as surely as spring follows winter.
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When a fourth hair appeared on my own face, just under my chin near Hair Number Three, I was cool with it. I’m getting older. My hormones are changing. It’s the way of things. But then, a month or so ago, I caught sight of something just above the hollow of my throat. A new hair. An inch long at least, with a slight curl. Wispier than its chin hair brethren, but still jarring. Horrifying. How long had it been there? Had it been winking away at people without me knowing? I was straight into the car to put Driving Tweezers to work.
A woman’s relationship with her body hair is, for many, a lifelong trudge through shifting sands. The hair grows where we don’t want it, and vanishes where we do. Conditions such as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome play havoc with hormones and facial hair. Young teenagers treat their first leg shave as a rite of passage. Pregnancy and birth triggers, among so many other things, hair loss and deranged regrowth.
About 10 years ago, my hair started falling out. It wasn’t a gradual thinning, but the sudden appearance of stark white bald patches. The worst-affected area was the hairline around my ears and temples on both sides. I monitored it anxiously for a week or so, wondering was this the start of total baldness. I had a vague memory of Scottish actor Gail Porter developing alopecia and crying on telly with Richard and Judy. I didn’t want to cry on telly with Richard and Judy. I didn’t want to have to shave the rest of my hair off. I knew I didn’t have the chic skull shape or cheekbones to pull it off.
A visit to the GP prompted blood tests and the beginning of a long wait to see a consultant dermatologist. The blood tests revealed nothing and while I waited for the derm appointment, I fretted and cried and tracked the hair loss. I wore my hair down all the time, parted in the middle and pulled forward to hide the bald patches. I cried to a friend out of the blue at a roasting, sweaty gig in Whelan’s, too self-conscious to tie my hair up but too hot to leave it sticking to my neck.
[ Alopecia: ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of her losing her hair’Opens in new window ]
By the time I finally saw the dermatologist, my alopecia areata, the autoimmune condition she diagnosed me with, had gone into a remission of sorts. The bald white patches hadn’t spread beyond the halo around my face, and downy white hairs had begun to grow. She told me there’s no cure, it’s not really clear what causes it, and that I would probably suffer from it in some form for the rest of my life.
And so I have, so far. It’s never been as bad as that first attack, but I always have at least one small patch of hair loss on the go. Sometimes it’s a small patch on my eyebrows. It has never caused me as much distress as that first bout, but I always feel a pang of fear when I spot a new little patch, wondering if I’m going full Gail Porter. I have so much empathy for those who suffer from alopecia totalis (loss of all scalp hair) – and alopecia universalis (complete body hair loss).
One thing I feel certain of is that no disease or syndrome will ever defeat my four chin hairs and all their yard brush relatives that are certainly in the post.
