Hi Laura,
Welcome to the "maintenance" part of your routine
After most of the thick hair has come out, it becomes easier over time ... even for us who aren't on hormones yet.
Sometimes I skip my routine and the hair on the legs and arms grows a bit too much. So I use the trick of shaving them with the electric razor first, to get the longest and thickest parts out. Then it's time to enter the shower and finish the rest with a new razor — it's so much easier that way! Of course, if I'm able to stick to a routine, the maintenance is much quicker. To give you an example, I'm able to shave legs, arms, hands, armpits, and chest in about 15-20 minutes in the shower. That's because the growth between two maintenance sessions is not much — a few millimeters at most, and those can be easily handled by a razor.
Thank goodness it's fine for males and females to get rid of their body hair. While at the beginning nobody knew besides my wife (who knows
everything), over time some people noticed (specially in the summer) that I had no or little body hair left (except on the abdomen — don't ask me why — it's the only place my wife wants me to keep body hair around — I don't mind that, since it will be covered by the corset anyway). They joked about it, and I joked back, telling them that's just a choice I made, and that I
really dislike body hair, no matter what
others think about it. Dealing with family and old friends is easier: at some point in my life, to disguise the feelings you are experiencing too, I used to wear a rather long beard; then for a while I was always clean-shaved; and for many years I had this "three-day beard" which is allegedly still fashionable. Now I'm clean-shaved again, of course, but the point is that people get used to the idea that I have weird ideas about my body hair
and that I switch moods about it. Now I just "pretend" I'm on a "phase" where I dislike
all body hair, because it's "fashionable". I get some odd looks from some family members and some friends, but I just laugh at them, daring to do the same ;-) In fact, I often joke with the male friends/family members asking them if they believe that their maleness is defined by the amount of body hair, or if they somehow feel that removing body hair threatens their maleness. Since I've been living with a woman as my loving partner and companion for 15 years now, it's obvious that this kind of thing makes them think twice about any rude comments they might have in mind — in fact, they never dared to say anything more than asking
why I shaved my body hair.
Now, for the next step — but give it time! Don't rush! There are no "set rules", except for the ones you set yourself! You're not "competing" with anybody! — I would certainly recommend three things that pretty much nobody will notice, but you will feel wonderful about them
The first is to polish your toenails. As it was already said on this thread, nobody will notice it, specially during the winter, except perhaps someone from your family. Polishing the toenails is comparatively easier than doing the finger nails (which obviously would be immediately visible to everybody!), and you can start with a transparent, matte polish, just to build up your confidence. That's something that will only be noticeable if someone is
really looking
very closely at your toenails, and how many people will do that, specially in winter?? So it's a rather safe bet, and you'll still be treated to a wealth of wonderful feelings — the smell of the polish in the air, the feeling of the careful strokes applying the polish to the toenail, the delightful moments of waiting until it dries... and the knowledge that, everywhere you go, your toenails will be polished, even if nobody (but you!) knows that.
Transparent matte polish is so unnoticeable that when I get my hands professionally manicured (something that I do rarely... but used to do more in the past, when I had spare money for that!), I usually let them apply polish — I know it's practically undetectable, and it's also something routinely used by males who have the habit (a good one, IMHO) of getting their hands professionally manicured. However, the important thing is that
I know the polish is there — I can feel it
With time, of course, you might be able to go bold on your toenails and apply bright colours — they will never show through except the thinnest of socks. I practice meditation regularly, and during the winter, I'm always wearing socks, and brightly-painted toenails beneath. To this day, nobody ever had the remotest clue about that, even though once I noticed that the socks had a hole in them, right near the toes!!
I also let the fingernails grow a bit longer than usual for males. There is a limit to how long I can let them grow until someone notices. It also means filing them regularly: what I've learned is that the more "kept" they look, the less people will notice their length. These days, I tend to trim them into an oval shape. It's out of fashion for women, I know, only old ladies do that, but strangely I've found that I can grow them much longer that way and still don't get eyebrows raised.
Speaking of eyebrows, another thing that you can also do which is pretty much unnoticeable is tweezing your eyebrows. Now, ideally, everybody tells me that you should let a professional do it for you the first time, and then just do some routine maintenance on the straggling hairs. I haven't done yet, but I do trim my eyebrows every week.
Personally, I'm double-lucky. First, I'm not that kind of person with incredibly think and bushy eyebrows
They are neither too thick, nor too thin — just "about right". And secondly, in my country, the ultra-thin eyebrows for women have gone out of fashion: slightly thicker eyebrows are "in" because they reveal more "personality", and this is the kind of look that women's magazines say that is "fashionable". So I don't really do much: I have just patiently defined them a little better by getting rid of all hairs growing outside the eyebrow, and that is enough in most cases, and will immediately give you a "kempt" appearance. As you get bolder, you can try to pull some hairs out from the lower part of the eyebrow (the inside) and get you a slight arch, which is more feminine, without, however, going too far! I was told that the trick is always to pull hairs from the lower part and work upwards — never the opposite. This is what I have been doing for the past 2 or 3 years, and, again, nobody has ever noticed or commented. Since I took many months to very patiently just pull some hairs out now and then, and did it very progressively, most people never noticed any difference, and, in fact, not even I notice much of a difference — except when applying the rest of the makeup, then I notice how feminine-looking the eyebrows are already! In fact, I have thinner eyebrows than my own wife (who is a very strong supporter of the "thick eyebrows mean a strong personality" — which she certainly has, with or without eyebrows!).
The point here is not really to follow a "list" or something that someone else has invented, saying "you have to do this and that to look and feel more feminine", but really to give you some simple ideas on things you can do routinely, without revealing much, but which will build up your confidence, give you a lot of fun while doing it, and give you that strange feeling that you're doing something "right" for you, even if in truth nobody will really notice any difference. We are also very lucky in this age, as metrosexuals are tolerated and accepted universally, and a lot of the above tips apply to males as well as females — it's perfectly socially acceptable for males to get rid of their body hair (I've known many cases of girls
demanding that their boyfriends get rid of it!), to go to a manicure and have their nails in good condition, to have their eyebrows trimmed and with a nice shape, and so forth. These days, fortunately, all that is acceptable.
You can (and should) even go further, and put a daily routine of using moisturizer or at least some body lotion on the exposed skin areas/face lotion/hand lotion. To be honest, I reluctantly started doing that when I was 25, under pressure from my mother at that time, who said that just because I was born a male, it didn't give me "indestructible skin" — living in a city with pollution and so forth, the skin gets subjected to all kinds of aggression, and males are not "immune" to it, even if they somehow pretend they are. The result, after almost two decades of using something on my face every day, is very noticeable: my younger brother, who refused to do anything "sissy" like that, looks almost ten years older than me, and he has been living in the country, where there is less pollution. His face is full of wrinkles, specially around the eyes and the lips, most of it coming from excessive sun exposition without any protection and never bothering to put any lotion or cream afterwards — but he might also have inherited the genes from my mother (who has lots of wrinkles), and, doing a very stressy job, he also gets more of those anyway. So it might just be coincidence. Either way, there is a huge difference! While in "male mode" my thinning hair will betray my true age, my skin looks at least ten years younger, even though I get yelled by my wife almost every day because I take too long in the bathroom for my daily routine
Here is all I do:
- eye cream with Q10 for the area around the eyes, which will pretty much prevent wrinkles to appear. I'm still surprised how at my age I have none there!
- face cream — I don't shave every day, but the days I do, I will also apply face cream to every area not covered by the balsam after shave (I never use alcohol-based products, except in an emergency!!)
- body lotion — for all exposed areas, specially the ones that I have no more body hair on that (i.e. arms, legs, chest)
- hand lotion — it also doubles as protection for the nails (I'm lucky, I have very strong nails). Sometimes I add almond oil just to the nails: it protects them even better, and while the oil is still drying, it remains a bit shiny, which gives my some pleasure
(after it has dried, it's invisible and matte)
- foot cream — mostly to keep the odour in check; to be honest, over the years, I have tried a lot of different products. Interestingly enough, I found out that either body lotion or hand cream will work best on the feet as well
It's not that the feet are often exposed, but, well, in summer, I enjoy wearing very open sandals with my outfits, and I certainly wish my feet to look great in them!
Yes, it takes some 10 minutes to do all that. But it pays off after decades — everything looks still much better because the skin has remained protected and moisturized for so many years. And I can't afford very expensive products, either, or I would use the best I could buy — most of them are from low-cost brands (like Nivea) or even "white label" products from the supermarket.
Here is a tip I got from the senior marketing manager from one of the top European cosmetics companies (he's my wife's uncle). They routinely check on their competition and are aware of the differences between themselves and the competitors. What he has found out is that the low-cost competition doesn't use "bad" products or "lower quality" products — they would lose too many customers that way, or, worse, they might get sued. Nivea, for instance, has relatively cheap products, but it's their industry practice to be at least 1% better in all tests done with competing products, and that's what their chemical engineers have as a goal when designing new products in their line. So, what's the difference to a product that costs 5 or 10 times as much? It's mostly the texture (which is very important for the faithful customers!) and things like fragrance. These are directly related to a subjective experience, but less so to the way the product acts on your skin — they use the same kind of active components to achieve the same results (e.g. moisturizing, less wrinkles, protection from an aggressive environment, and so forth). A typical example: Nivea's hand cream. It has a very "pasty" and sticky texture, which most people will find too rough and unpleasant. It also doesn't smell particularly nice. Thus, it's far cheaper than competing products (like the ones produced by my wife's uncle), because few female clients will enjoy the sticky, coarse texture of Nivea's hand cream. But if you're after the end result, their hand cream is as good (or even 1% better!) than things from L'Oreal, Garnier, or any other fashionable, high-end brand. The high-end products might also work for longer periods, do not get spoiled so easily, do not need to be applied so often, or target specific skin types (while Nivea's product lines are usually — not always — one-size-fits-all types). So it's not as if they're not different — they certainly have plenty of differences — it's just that, in the industry, a lower-cost brand is not necessarily "terribly bad".
Of course, there are exceptions. I would recommend to stay away from Chinese brands, for example. They're ultra-cheap and come in a vast variety of options. However, the clinical tests made in China are not so restricted as in the US, Europe, or Japan. This means that the likelihood of being allergic to them is much higher. I have tried out lots of Chinese products, specially makeup, and after having some painful experiences with them, I can just say that the quality is simply too low, even if the prices are excellent. If you start buying some makeup, specially for sensitive areas like the eyes, it truly pays off to get reasonable brands from the US/Europe/Japan, even if they're a bit more costly, just because the quality control they have to go through is much higher, and it's very likely they will not irritate your skin (or your eyes).
But that's a bit in the future! For now, you have lots and lots of options to have fun with, and enjoy to the fullest, without pressure, and, most importantly, without getting noticed
