Skin in the game
Jun. 1st, 2017 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerShaving. I have a complex relationship with shaving.
I've just done it, and my face feels like mine again. If you ever see me with a beard longer than an eighth of an inch, it's a sign I've been down for a long time. There was a time in my life when I actually chose to have a beard, but it was never entirely a free choice. My skin, you see, objects to being shaved, and while this is probably true of most people--hence the proliferation of lotions and potions and gunks dedicated to making it less of an ordeal--it seems worse for me. My face feels like mine, but it's also prickling and itching like mad and making me want to scratch it, and nothing seems to stop that. I've tried. Of course, the fact that I then spend the next three hours finding bits I've missed and debating whether to trail back to the bathroom and get rid of them doesn't help.
If I had the money and my druthers, I'd do something permanent about it, but that's pure vanity and totally unjustifiable, and besides there are people of whom I am fond who for some bizarre reason like me with facial hair, so I feel I need to keep the option open for their sake.
But it is my face, and while it will never ever in this world be a woman's face, despite the best efforts of FaceApp--I sometimes try to analyse just what it is FaceApp changes, but I haven't succeeded yet--I'd kind of like it not to be aggressively full-on male at least some of the time.
And let's not even talk about my arms and legs.
I've just done it, and my face feels like mine again. If you ever see me with a beard longer than an eighth of an inch, it's a sign I've been down for a long time. There was a time in my life when I actually chose to have a beard, but it was never entirely a free choice. My skin, you see, objects to being shaved, and while this is probably true of most people--hence the proliferation of lotions and potions and gunks dedicated to making it less of an ordeal--it seems worse for me. My face feels like mine, but it's also prickling and itching like mad and making me want to scratch it, and nothing seems to stop that. I've tried. Of course, the fact that I then spend the next three hours finding bits I've missed and debating whether to trail back to the bathroom and get rid of them doesn't help.
If I had the money and my druthers, I'd do something permanent about it, but that's pure vanity and totally unjustifiable, and besides there are people of whom I am fond who for some bizarre reason like me with facial hair, so I feel I need to keep the option open for their sake.
But it is my face, and while it will never ever in this world be a woman's face, despite the best efforts of FaceApp--I sometimes try to analyse just what it is FaceApp changes, but I haven't succeeded yet--I'd kind of like it not to be aggressively full-on male at least some of the time.
And let's not even talk about my arms and legs.