Chin Hairs and Other Nasty Surprises: The Art of Aging

Nobody had to tell me I'd have chin hairs when I grew older. I'm an Italiana. Near as I can tell, all Italian women get them. Or, at least all the Italian women I know. Just how it goes. Perhaps it is an overabundance of testosterone. Which may be why so many Italian men love their mamas so. Or maybe it's all the garlic. Or maybe it's because Italian women outlive their husbands (don't get me started on all that; we could be here for weeks.) and know that they're going to do double duty after their husbands are long gone. Who knows? Point is, I knew they'd show up eventually. I just wasn't prepared for such an early appearance. Nor did I have a clue about just how abundant they would be. Lemme tell ya, it's not the happiest of surprises. It's downright scary!

So even though it wasn’t a huge surprise to find them on that oh-so-early-in-my-thirties day, I was taken aback when I found so many. I mean…how could they just all of a sudden show up just like that….in such vast numbers? And…it’s not as if they’re all soft and fuzzy either. Oh no. We’re talking about little black thorns sticking out of your face. All stiff and prickly and BLACK. ICK! It would’ve been nice if somebody woulda warned me about that. And just how much time it was going to take for me to manage them. We’re talking twice a day, every single day, til death do us part. It’s its very own part time job. There’s no money in it, of course, but you have to do it no matter what. You can’t just say, ‘well, I’ll get to it tomorrow.’ Oh no. That won’t do at all. Skip a day of plucking and the next morning you wake up looking like a middle aged man after a 3 day binge at the local pool hall. It feels like somebody stuck a miniature boot scraper on your chin while you were asleep.

Imagine what that might be like if you happen to have a man lying in bed beside you, and, upon awakening finds himself in an amorous morning mood. He reaches over to stroke your face and gently kiss you awake, still half asleep himself, only to find the face he’s caressing feels like the 90 grit sandpaper he used to refinish the dining room table. Probably a bit terrifying for the guy, you know? So no you can’t skip a day. You must scan your chin with the scrutiny of your mother-in-law’s eagle eyes when she walks in your house every year at Christmas to see just how many of the family ornaments have been hung on your tree. Twice a day.. every day. At night, just prior to going to bed because of course you don’t want your man getting all frisky and then finding them with his delicious lips as he makes his way from your mouth to the more southern regions. Talk about buzz kill. And then, first thing in the morning, when, of course, you get out of bed before he does so you can dash into the bathroom and pull out those suckers that popped out during the night. How the hell do they grow so long in 8 hours? And why doesn’t the hair on my head grow that fast? It takes 3 months to grow an eighth of an inch of hair on my head, but my chin will grow hairs that are an inch long overnight. It’s a miracle. Only not the kind of miracle I was hoping for. Crap.

Oh sure. You’re over there saying, ‘Hey Lady. They have this thing called laser hair removal.’ Yea. Well let me tell you right now. Laser hair removal is for normal women. Italian women don’t have normal chin hairs. My younger sister did this. The doctor told her she’d have to go about 6 times over a 6 month period to get them all. So she did. Problem was that by the time she’d gotten to session 6, a whole new crop of follicles had somehow reproduced only this time the hairs were white. No problem, you say? You can’t see those. Yea. But you can feel them. And they’re even more stiff than the black ones. The doc says, ’sorry. Can’t do anything about those. The laser needs pigment to find the follicle. You’ll have to pull those out yourself.’

Back to the tweezers.

I suppose all this might be sounding a bit whiny. But honestly...I'm not whining. Rather, this is my attempt to urge women to laugh at the aging process, regardless of the nasty little surprises. Whether it's hair on your chin or your lip or sagging mounds of flesh or stark white pubic hair popping out without warning, there is a choice here: you can either laugh or fret. Laughing is so much more fun. Fretting doesn't change anything (although it may contribute to even more white hair!). You can spend thousands of dollars trying to fight the clock or you can take it all with a grain of salt and giggle your way to old age. On the bright side, at least you're not growing hair on your back!