Enough With The Facial Hair Already

Dear Face,

I thought you were aware of this, but it seems you may have forgotten lately, so I’m just going to issue this friendly reminder: I’m not a dude. And I don’t want a beard, or any of the other random thatches of hair you’ve been so interested in giving me, so please. Staaahhhp.

Maybe you always wanted to be a scalp instead and you’re just giving it your one measly shot. I get it, we all have dreams. But, Face, my dreams do not include looking like Dr. Phil or Phil from “Duck Dynasty” or any Phil, for that matter.

I forgave you for the eyebrows, even though they looked like two caterpillars inching across my forehead. Once I discovered tweezers in my junior year of high school, I was able to sport the same skinny brows as every other respectable 90s chick, and you and I were still cool. In fact, I didn’t even blame you, because I was secretly so relieved that brow (over)plucking was the only facial hair maintenance I ever had to do. Tweezing my eyebrows into pencil-thin perfection was plenty of work. And high school was hard enough without adding a mustache to the mix. I wanted to be admired by the teenage boys, not envied for my mustache-growing skills.

But then I became an adult, and shit got real. Brows were child’s play. I don’t know if it was grown-up hormones, or if my face had some kind of vendetta against me for yanking out half my eyebrows, or if karma was just like, “I saw you smirking inside when you didn’t grow a mustache in high school.” Either way, I grew a fucking beard. One or two stray hairs would have been understandable, but no – you gave me a full-on chin carpet. The kind that, if I didn’t stay vigilant with the maintenance, would get me some solid hipster cred. It started with a little unsightly black stubble and then progressed from there, thickening with each pregnancy. And after four kids, well … I can probably grow a better beard than my husband. One day, I hope it’s fashionable enough – or I just give few enough fucks – to try. But today is not that day.

And that’s not the only bone I have to pick. Because despite your capability to cultivate a luxurious thicket of chin hair, I didn’t think I had a ‘stache to maintain too. Until one morning when I was carpooling to the gym with my friend, and she looked at me in the sparkling sunlight and said airily, “Do you ever wax your upper lip?” It was disguised as an innocent question, but I could see through it the way she could see through my gloriously illuminated peach fuzz. It was one of those graciously yet mortifyingly tactful hints, which replayed over and over in my head with a burning mix of gratitude and offense. So from then on, I started waxing my upper lip too.

I’m not even going to go into detail about what happened a couple weeks ago when I found three gnarly black neck hairs. NECK HAIRS. It’s bad enough that my own face has betrayed me, but I mean … et tu, Neck?

Face, you’ve got to be tired of me ripping out hairs left and right, so please stop giving me more. Chin, lip, brows – the only hairs left are my eyelashes, and so help me if those assholes start giving me grief, they’ll be gone too. I am beyond fed up at growing hair anywhere that isn’t on my head or in the places where puberty puts it (that’s bad enough). You’re free to stop sprouting random strands at any time now k thanks. Quit going rogue and trying to do shit you aren’t supposed to do. Maybe stick to wrinkling.

I’m not happy about that either, but at least it’s in your job description.