I've decided to pull the trigger on laser beard removal. (It's less thorough than electrolysis, but cheaper and less painful, and my light skin and dark hair is supposed to be a good match for it.) My [earlier fear of](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) maybe needing beard shadow to avoid accidentally passing (and thereby incurring unwanted social costs, however much I would prefer my reflection) looks ridiculous in hindsight; I'm sure I've never read as anything other than a man with gynecomastia—and it's even more moot now that I've [quit HRT](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/). (On that subject, the return of my standard-issue hormone balance has been mostly uneventful, my main observation being that spontaneous erections are a disturbing nuisance after the peace of having had that system set to Do-Not-Disturb for a few months.)
-I told myself that before committing to laser, I should take some days or weeks without shaving to make sure I really understood what I would be giving up. (One thing I regret about the HRT experiment is that I neglected to take a bare-chested "Before" photo. As having breasts has become more familiar, I'm not sure I _remember_ what my chest was like seven months ago; I should have been _documenting_ the changes: you know, for Science.)
+<a id="anchor-before"></a>I told myself that before committing to laser, I should take some days or weeks without shaving to make sure I really understood what I would be giving up. (One thing I regret about the HRT experiment is that I neglected to take a bare-chested "Before" photo. As having breasts has become more familiar, I'm not sure I _remember_ what my chest was like seven months ago; I should have been _documenting_ the changes: you know, for Science.)
I lasted about six days. Facial hair is just _gross_.
Title: Laser 9
-Date: 2018-10-15 05:00
+Date: 2018-10-26 05:00
Category: other
Tags: not-a-transition, lasers
Status: draft
-...
\ No newline at end of file
+<a href="/images/laser_9.jpg"><img src="/images/laser_9.jpg" width="180" style="float: left; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
+
+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](/2017/Nov/laser-1/). (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](https://www.urbana.ie/blog/can-laser-hair-removal-work-light-hair/))—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](/2017/Nov/laser-1/#anchor-before)_—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 and involuntarily infer my sex from my facial structure even at my cleanest-shaven. (And things are only going to get worse—despite my beautiful ponytail in the back, Trent says my hairline in the front is already a [Norwood 3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%E2%80%93Norwood_scale), 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](https://www.laseraway.com/articles/hair-removal/effective-laser-hair-removal-really/) 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's supposed to; who knows?
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff
