Bearded women, say goodbye to bristles
A woman I have recently made friends with is a proper person. Let me tell you a tale to illustrate this.
When Grania (fake name) married her husband, 50 years ago, she inherited a Dame Margaret Rutherford-style formidable aunt, who came complete with bristling beard and moustache.
Grania, being a proper person, saw it as her duty to go and visit the spinster aunt regularly, even though she lived an inconvenient distance away.
One day, Grania gathered her courage and told the battle-axe, ‘What I’m about to say is coming from a place of love. When ladies get older, they often grow hairs on their face which they can’t see themselves because their eyesight isn’t what it was. But the good news is there is something called depilation, which takes these hairs away – and there is a little salon just down the road from here.’
Shortly afterwards, Grania received a letter from the aunt. It commended Grania for her bravery – as it had dawned that others must have noticed the hairs as well, but been too cowed to say anything. She announced that the depilation parlour had been visited and top-up visits were on the agenda.
And later, in recognition of the place of love from which Grania had been speaking, she received a substantial legacy in the aunt’s will.
Today we must all be our own Granias. Even in our twenties, women can grow unsightly facial hairs, increasing in volume as the decades pass. Research by L’Oréal has shown that almost 40 per cent of women aged 45 and over have an excess of facial hair growth, especially under the chin, which happens to be the least inspected area, as we never think to look below the chin line.
More often, the trouble spot is the upper lip. To perform ‘Grania watch’, we will need to stand in bright light, wielding a 10x magnifying mirror to spot the offending hairs.
The late literary giant John Gross, editor of the TLS, was delighted by a new word he had found. A baffona was defined as ‘a woman with a not unattractive moustache’ and we were able to identify a black-haired femme fatale in the literary world as a baffona. Paradoxically she was a stunner because of, not despite, the moustache.
But baffonas are few and far between, and most women need to get rid of these moustaches. Be warned.
Waxing is too fierce and can leave a bright red strip. In threading, the victim lies back in a comfortable chair in a salon while the clinician uses twisted threads systematically to rip out all the hair in the moustache area.
Both threading and waxing take out too many hairs.
A black-haired colleague, aged 30, who has flawless ivory skin, boasted that this was entirely due to a visit to a dermaplaning parlour where the therapist wields something called a dermatome. This has an oscillating blade that moves back and forth to ‘skim’ off evenly the surface layers of skin.
Gratifying layers of previously unseen grime and flaky, dead skin came off with each scraping. You can buy a dermatome yourself, but only a professional will make sure you do not have any microcuts or scratches.
All well and good in the short term – but it is a mistake for younger woman to use such overzealous ‘Agent Orange’ treatments. Only stiff, dark hairs need to be removed. You can do this by tweezing, using a magnifying mirror.
The so-called vellus, or near invisible down on the face, should be left when you’re young. It was designed by nature to regulate temperature and evaporate sweat.
In later life, hormonal changes can cause this down to become more of a pelt. A fifty-something friend now uses a woman’s shaving tool on her facial pelt.
She paid £22.99 to the Gurelax store for an elegant little device which she runs over her face.
‘It just sort of buzzes over your face, collecting hair,’ says Sarah. ‘It doesn’t pull them out, which is probably why it’s not painful. It is just like shaving for a man. It is really fun to use. And what you do at the end is undo the little cap bit and there is a collecting area where all the fuzz has collected, and that is obviously very satisfying. I do this about once every two months.’
But young women are blessed with a light, peachy down. This can be flattering as it provides a blur effect, as well as being attractive in its own right. Think how lovely peaches are.
