Laser 9

I had my ninth laser session the other week (out of the ten-session package that I prepaid for), almost a year after my first. (They schedule them out four to six weeks, and I rescheduled a couple of them.) I'm ... pretty underwhelmed by the results so far? My facial hair is nontrivially thinner than it was before (and maybe slightly blonder by attrition)—it's hard to be sure of the magnitude because apparently I'm still the kind of idiot who doesn't bother to take detailed "Before" photos even after explicitly noting this—but there's still a lot of it noticeably there. "Marking my face as male", I want to put it, but maybe that would be a misleading phrasing, because it's not as if people don't reliably, involuntarily infer my sex from my facial structure even at my cleanest-shaven. (And I should remember that things are only going to get worse—despite my beautiful–beautiful ponytail in the back, Trent says my hairline in the front is already a Norwood 3, and it takes all of my strength as an aspiring rationalist just to believe him.)

I'm not sure how typical my results are and why—the marketing literature from the clinic/parlor/salon promises permanent reduction by "up to 90 percent after 6–8 treatments", but up to isn't exactly a probability distribution. Maybe I just have resilient hair; maybe I'm grimacing or grunting too much during the treatment, priming the merciful nurse–technician to hold back on the zapping more than she (invariably she) is supposed to; who knows?