if I start transitioning full-time, I'll have to wait for the hair to grow back for 5-6 days before I can wax it again. What do I do in the meantime? Hide in my room? (I'd have to work, go to class...) Of course if I shave it, I won't be able to wax it, which is an issue if I want to go out to any prolonged event en femme.

Also the trick seems to be that waxing doesn't take all the hair off but if it weakens the hair left behind so much that you can just grab it with your fingernails, like mass tweezing-- it stings slightly but it's sooo easy!

Tweeting is a really bad way to get rid of facial hairs. I tried to help a girl once who was doing this by taking her to an electrologist but the follicles were so damaged from tweeting there was not much that could be done. Tweeting and ripping the hair will only cause below surface hairs and crooked follicles that electro won't work on. This poor girl is now stuck with a beard shaving for the rest of her life. She would go out in the morning and then hide inside the rest of the day once the makeup wears down. Please be careful

Well, waxing worked for me when I had electrolysis.  The lady doing it advised me to wax between sessions.  She would then work on the weakened hairs later.  This was a long time ago, so I don't know if anything has changed, and was only for the first few months of electro. 

Luckily when I was doing this I wasn't working.  If I remember correctly I just put a cream over the top of it.  Sorry I can't help you more with that bit, too long ago.

There's a lot of conflicting advice here but I was told not to even consider it due to the damage it can do.

Quote from: big kim on February 07, 2013, 03:35:35 AM
There's a lot of conflicting advice here but I was told not to even consider it due to the damage it can do.

Well, I was only saying what I did.  It worked for me.  That was about 18/19 years ago, so maybe they do things different now.

I was under the impression you could not wax your face like the rest of your body 

Quote from: Shawn Sunshine on February 07, 2013, 03:54:55 AM
I was under the impression you could not wax your face like the rest of your body 

It was hard wax.  Not the soft wax you use on your legs and pull off with a cloth.  You wait for it to harden then pull off.  Very effective. 

Later you melt all the used bits in a pot and strain through a pair of old pantyhose, and re use.

and your sure this is safe for someone who wants to laser their hair later?

I couldn't say.  I'd be asking the laser people for their advice. 

Remember this was a long time ago and with electrolysis.  All I can say is it worked for me. 

if you wish to laser then don't wax your face. That's not a good idea.

I was even told by Electrologist that waxing and tweeting facial hair was also bad.

By gods...i couldn't even imagine waxing a face. You would have to grow that puppy out, smear wax on your face and rip it off. LOL...no thanks!

Actually you didn't have to grow it out much.  Can't really remember that well, but it must have hurt    Not as much as electro though.

I'm Asian, so the lip and chin is the main area for me....it's actually not that painful...like removing a bandaid at most.

I tweezed my face ONCE and it was just... awful. First off, it took me over 4 hours to finish. I locked myself in my room and played movies on my computer while I was tweezing away, but still. Ugh. And the pain. Let me tell you, anyone that says that doesn't hurt is a LIAR. Beard hairs are different from body hairs in that they are more deeply rooted and they've got stronger, more resilient roots. There were hairs that I would pull on pretty much full force and they would just slide out in between the tweezers, so there was a lot of tugging and irritation. There were just some areas that hurt so bad, like I mean tears streaming down my face bad and I have a pretty high pain tolerance. Above the lip and under the chin were the absolute worst areas. Another awful thing about the experience was the bleeding. Because the roots are deeper there is a higher chance of bleeding. Not fun at all. It wasn't just a speck of blood and then done, either. Some hair follicles would bring up so much blood that it would start to drip down my face. My hair didn't grow back for about two weeks, which was ABSOLUTELY wonderful, but when it finally did start growing back in I was breaking out so badly. Some of the hairs didn't grow back quite right either, they were either really soft or oddly hard and I had to either wait for them to grow out long enough to slide out with a tweezer or if they got stuck in the pore I had to basically squeeze them out like blackheads. It's been quite a while since I tweezed my beard and I'm finally not getting those weird hairs anymore, but only recently have they stopped coming.

Basically all I can imagine is that waxing a beard would be all of that but done much faster, so more pain and more bleeding at one time. Yikes.

Sorry Erika, but I can't say I would suggest waxing the beard, and AusBelle is the first person I've encountered that has had anything positive to say about beard waxing. My suggestion? Get a good razor, get a very good conditioning shave cream, and some red/orange lipstick/shadow to really blend into the beard area before putting on foundation. You could also look into DermaBlend, I see it getting a lot of positive reviews. Best of luck to you!

If I hadn't already experienced upper lip electrolysis with no numbing stuff, I'd say this hurts me just reading it. No, I'm still going to say it.

bunch of wussies 

You don't do the whole face at once.  You do it in little sections.  Then baby smooth skin.

I know I did it a long time ago, but I'm sure it didn't hurt as much as electro.  Especially the upper lip.

Anyway, I had been on HRT for a little while so things were thinning out.  You only have to do it for a few months in conjunction with electro, and then everything thins out considerably.

I'm not on hormones, nor have I had laser or electrolysis, so I'm not sure how the pain compares. But I regularly wax my upper lip, and yeah, I'd take it over shaving any day!

I think the key here is using good quality hard wax... for such a delicate area you really need something that grips the hairs but leaves the skin alone as much as possible. I've had a bit of practice now, but even with two-three weeks of "average white male" growth I can pull everything from my upper lip in two 'peels', so it definitely seems to work for me. The only thing I find is I do get a little redness for about half an hour, and sometimes I get a few oily "white spots" (possibly I'm not exfoliating properly?)

Anyway, just my experience . As for the strip wax though, yikes... no-one is coming near my face with that!

I'm Southeast Asian, so all that's needed is the chin and the upper lip...I didn't find waxing was that bad really. I'm looking into epilators?

I use an epilator on my legs, but  wouldn't recommend using one on the facial area.  They're just not that delicate.  Stick to hard wax.

If my hair is straight rather than curly, then I will have less of a chance of ruining my shot at laser or electrolysis later right? I'm a poor college student, I can't afford anything like that until I graduate and get a job.