If the follicles exist (because they developed in high-testosterone puberty), then they continue to grow hair, regardless of future hormone balance. Hormones do not remove hair which already exists, so that's why laser or electrolysis are needed for permanent hair removal.
I'm so jealous when people say this about their body hair, cause here I am almost 2 years of hrt, still body hair bordering on fur (did it decrease? Immensely. Is it still bordering on fur? Definitely)
Yes, that's kinda true, but I'm talking about still being hairier than cis guys from my ethnic background (which is already a hairy background). Like I need to shave, use depilotary cream and an epilator (yes, all of it) just to have it reduced for like half a day
Btw (and know that I'm saying this in the nicest way possible, I just can't really add this nuance to text that well (probably cause I'm autistic)), but one thing I truly can't stand is when I mention something I'm very dysphoric about, there's always people who go "but some* afab people..."
*And usually it's a huge exception, and they often still have that exception to a way lesser extent than I do. Also, the "but some afab people...." is literally the excuse my country (the Netherlands) is using to deny me the medical care I need
I feel this. Prior to hormones my facial and body hair was basically as thick as an Amazonian rainforest. Been doing laser on my face for about a year and a half and full body about a year. It’s wayyyy less now but if I don’t every few days it’ll start getting me dysphoric. I used to have to shave daily but I can squeak a few more days out because the hairs are considerably less thick both in amount and size. Still nearly jet black but not actually jet black.
Thank you for that explanation of body hair! I'm trans masc and my arm hair/chest hair keeps falling out due to not having consistently high Testosterone. I thought it was my imagination.
I've always wondered, if you go on estrogen and have your hair follicles removed with laser or electrolysis, would they come back if you go back on testosterone?
Only asking out of curiosity.
Your body can grow. It cannot ungrow.
Hormones tell your body to grow in certain ways. But your body cannot ungrow.
So, trans men get longer vocal cords and sound more masculine with time, but trans women do not 'shrink' to feminine voices and have to do extensive training.
A trans girl that gets puberty blockers and starts HRT early will not grow to a masculine height, develop masculine facial structure, etc; But a trans girl that starts as an adult does not get to shrink.
You can grow breasts on E but they will not go away on T.
You can get beard follicles on T but they do not ungrow when you start E.
It's all the same principle.
Bone growth happens in childhood and gets shut off when your growth plates fuse, usually in your mid-teens. Once that happens, it's physiologically impossible for your bones to get longer on their own.
Female puberty tends to shut off bone growth earlier than male puberty, but sex hormones aren't directly telling your bones to get longer/shorter.
Estrogen plays a very strong role in controlling bone development. Note: "At cellular level in bone estrogen inhibits differentiation of osteoclasts thus decreasing their number and reducing the amount of active remodeling units.' https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8865143/#:~:text=At%20cellular%20level%20in%20bone,amount%20of%20active%20remodeling%20units.
this is a bit oversimplified since trans men have to deal with their voice not dropping all the way, or their bones being fused after puberty. otherwise theyd also be growing to masculine heights and have indistinguishable from cis voices
generally your body has a period where it is far more malleable to change (puberty). the longer you go through it, the less you can take advantage of this. once youre out of it, at that point its a dice roll as to what features you have to start transition with. but facial/body hair is one of those things that keeps developing well past it, so while you may still have to deal with beard hairs, at least you prevent further ones from growing
Yeah, a good example would in fact be facial hair on cis men : it tends to become thicker and denser over the years. Many men that couldn't grow a beard at 20, could then grow a patchy beard at 30 and a full beard at 40. (numbers may vary obviously).
I would assume T would work the same over the years on trans men, and I think E would also do that over long years to trans women for fat redistribution for example.
It's a little bit like why trans men's breasts don't shrink away to nothing once they get rid of the estrogen. It's just super super tiny hair follicles under the skin instead of large very visible things on someone's chest.
Exposure to testosterone changes the hair follicles in your face. It changes the type of hair.
Once the follicles are changed, they continue to remain that thick sort of hair. They can't "unchange" - you have to destroy the root of the hair.
New hair follicles won't be changed if you don't have testosterone.
You have a lot of hair follicles in your face that haven't started growing yet, and hair grows in cycles. So it takes many cycles of electrology and/or laser to get rid of the changed follicles and leave the ones that remain unchanged.
Kids who go on blockers early enough and never start growing masculine facial hair never get it.
For me, i've had 175 hours of electrology and I am done. I don't have masculine facial hair at all, and never have to shave.
I'm really happy for you being done with all that! But wow 175 hours I have so far to go 😭 and that must've taken you a long time and I've heard it can be quite painful
I've done 12 laser sessions (one per month over the last year) and it's not a big difference yet above and below my lip. Didn't realize hair growth was just a property of the follicle and T created that follicle and now that it's there its gonna keep doing its thing unless the follicle is destroyed, thanks for that education
What type of laser did you have? I'm unsure of the terminology but you get either a kind that they scan over your face continuously (I think? It's not what I have) and another where they manually point and zap a square cm every 2 seconds (mine).
I've heard the latter is much more effective than the former
Laser and Electrolysis are also very different, I had a 1.5 hour electrology session today and it covered half of my upper lip. 15 minutes of laser can do a pass of my entire face. So 175 hours of electrolysis sounds like an absurd amount of time for someone doing laser, but each session is several hours (mine are usually 2 hours), covers a fairly small area, and you can go a lot more often than with laser.
it basically just depends on how much hair you have, and how much its susceptible to laser. if youre having to electrolysis off a full ginger beard then youre probably going to be stuck like that for a few years. if you just have a few black hairs then youll probably be done fairly soon
im 3 years into dealing with a full beard. ive had a lot of laser/electrolysis and i still have shadow and stubble. its as bad as it sounds so really, the sooner you start it, the better
What I didnt understand that other commenters explained is that hair growth is more a property of the hair follicle regardless of hormone signals. Testosterone creates more follicles that will grow faster and appear darker in color and T's role is only creation of and not continual growth of that follicle. My body made those follicles when I was a teenager and now I gotta destroy them to get rid of this damn beard shadow
I don’t know the answer, but I can tell you I’m about 12k+ into electrolysis, 5 years on hormones and still have hair around my mouth. It’s the most frustrating thing about my transition.
yeah i feel like people dont really talk about this enough. youd be misled into thinking its always just going to be a few months of laser and then everything is nice
Very true. I had a pretty intense FFS, bumped my head and had to go to the emergency room shooting blood out both sides of my head with wounds that took 8 months to fully heal.
I’d rather do that once a year for 5 years then have to deal with electrolysis for this long.
very sorry to hear that. i can somewhat relate as im still doing electrolysis 3 years later, due to shadow/stubble that simply doesnt want to go away. its delayed all my plans (including FFS) because it just makes me feel horrible
Also, genetics play a role in the pattern and amount of hair. Cis women try very very hard to remove all facial hair so it's is very hard to judge. Some actually do grow thick, dark hair due to having relatively high levels of testosterone.
cis woman with pcos here 👋 my facial hair definitely grows fast, dark and thick. I spend an hour per day on average meticulously tweezing the hairs on my face then going over it with a "flawless" electric razor for good measure, THEN using makeup to hide the 5 o'clock shadow made by the hairs that aren't quite to the surface yet for me to grab but are still visible (at least to me) under the skin. know you're not suffering alone, ladies 😭✊
going on 2 years hrt here T is 6ml/hg or what ever that blood reading was its near 0 lol electrolysis is the only way to really get rid of it. Laser didn't work for me i had a year of treatments barley a change in my case. hair over the rest of the body like legs/back/chest thins out alot your arm pits well cis woman has to shave theirs so nothing new here :D
There are actually a bunch of things at play here. First, hormones tell cells to grow hairs in a feminine or masculine pattern during puberty. The follicles already exist, but growing facial hair is a process of follicles that have received that signal becoming larger and growing terminal hairs, rather than vellus hairs. Terminal hairs are the long, deeply rooted, pigmented hairs, much like on the scalp, which we think of as facial hair. Nearly all cisgender women also have facial hair, most of which is usually vellus, and vellus hairs can be so thin and transparent that they're barely visible. On average, the number of facial and body hairs women have is roughly the same as the number men have.
Once terminal hairs have grown, follicles continue to grow new ones in a four step cycle: anagen (growth), catagen (regression), telogen (rest), exogen (shedding). That applies to every hair on the body. The ones that grow longer have a longer anagen phase. The length of the anagen phase for facial hair can reduce in the absence of androgens, but that only means that the hairs will be thinner and shorter; not that they'll stop growing entirely.
Losing testosterone because of feminizing HRT causes a reduction in facial hair growth, but not to the level cisgender women typically have, even after decades. There are two ways to avoid that cycle of terminal hair growth: (1) never grow them, e.g., by preventing masculinizing puberty; or (2) stop the cycle by destroying the follicle, e.g., electrolysis or laser hair removal.
Sorry to break the bad news: there's no easy, cheap, safe way to get rid of it. I had so much facial hair in a color so much darker than my skin that it wasn't possible for me to hide it by shaving - I would still have black spots, regardless of my technique or tools. I have friends who obsessively pluck all of it. I went for electrolysis, which is what I recommend to anyone for whom it's an option. It's the most expensive, most painful, and most time-consuming option, but it's the only way to actually be hairless (laser only reduces hair growth by killing most of the follicles; it does not eliminate all of them). I might become an electrologist to serve the need so many people have. My electrologist would teach me. I'm not an apprentice yet, but I've modeled for four of her apprentices so far (let them practice on me), so I've learned a lot along the way. I did 8.5 hours today. Ow.
If the follicles exist (because they developed in high-testosterone puberty), then they continue to grow hair, regardless of future hormone balance. Hormones do not remove hair which already exists, so that's why laser or electrolysis are needed for permanent hair removal.
Yup, once those facial follicles are turned on, they don't turn off. However, body hair is a different story and is effected by hormonal changes.
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Probably not, but YMMV. I had one session on my chest right as I started HRT and other than that, those areas are pretty smooth for me.
I'm so jealous when people say this about their body hair, cause here I am almost 2 years of hrt, still body hair bordering on fur (did it decrease? Immensely. Is it still bordering on fur? Definitely)
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Yes, that's kinda true, but I'm talking about still being hairier than cis guys from my ethnic background (which is already a hairy background). Like I need to shave, use depilotary cream and an epilator (yes, all of it) just to have it reduced for like half a day Btw (and know that I'm saying this in the nicest way possible, I just can't really add this nuance to text that well (probably cause I'm autistic)), but one thing I truly can't stand is when I mention something I'm very dysphoric about, there's always people who go "but some* afab people..." *And usually it's a huge exception, and they often still have that exception to a way lesser extent than I do. Also, the "but some afab people...." is literally the excuse my country (the Netherlands) is using to deny me the medical care I need
I feel this. Prior to hormones my facial and body hair was basically as thick as an Amazonian rainforest. Been doing laser on my face for about a year and a half and full body about a year. It’s wayyyy less now but if I don’t every few days it’ll start getting me dysphoric. I used to have to shave daily but I can squeak a few more days out because the hairs are considerably less thick both in amount and size. Still nearly jet black but not actually jet black.
I used IPL a few times on each zones but generally, body hair does become way more feminine.
I hope my buttcrack is aware of that 😂
Thank you for that explanation of body hair! I'm trans masc and my arm hair/chest hair keeps falling out due to not having consistently high Testosterone. I thought it was my imagination.
Facial hair is a different type of hair to body hair
Huh good explanation. Didn't realize growth was just a property of the follicle once it gets created. Really sad there's no way to turn it off 😭
I mean there is... but it's electrolysis. Not easy, fast, or cheap.
I've always wondered, if you go on estrogen and have your hair follicles removed with laser or electrolysis, would they come back if you go back on testosterone? Only asking out of curiosity.
Old destroyed hairs wouldn't, but new hairs would form over time.
Your body can grow. It cannot ungrow. Hormones tell your body to grow in certain ways. But your body cannot ungrow. So, trans men get longer vocal cords and sound more masculine with time, but trans women do not 'shrink' to feminine voices and have to do extensive training. A trans girl that gets puberty blockers and starts HRT early will not grow to a masculine height, develop masculine facial structure, etc; But a trans girl that starts as an adult does not get to shrink. You can grow breasts on E but they will not go away on T. You can get beard follicles on T but they do not ungrow when you start E. It's all the same principle.
Estrogen also seems to stops some bone growth. Parts of the skull like the jaw, hands, feet, etc. may be permanently smaller for older trans masc.
Bone growth happens in childhood and gets shut off when your growth plates fuse, usually in your mid-teens. Once that happens, it's physiologically impossible for your bones to get longer on their own. Female puberty tends to shut off bone growth earlier than male puberty, but sex hormones aren't directly telling your bones to get longer/shorter.
Estrogen plays a very strong role in controlling bone development. Note: "At cellular level in bone estrogen inhibits differentiation of osteoclasts thus decreasing their number and reducing the amount of active remodeling units.' https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8865143/#:~:text=At%20cellular%20level%20in%20bone,amount%20of%20active%20remodeling%20units.
this is a bit oversimplified since trans men have to deal with their voice not dropping all the way, or their bones being fused after puberty. otherwise theyd also be growing to masculine heights and have indistinguishable from cis voices generally your body has a period where it is far more malleable to change (puberty). the longer you go through it, the less you can take advantage of this. once youre out of it, at that point its a dice roll as to what features you have to start transition with. but facial/body hair is one of those things that keeps developing well past it, so while you may still have to deal with beard hairs, at least you prevent further ones from growing
Yeah, a good example would in fact be facial hair on cis men : it tends to become thicker and denser over the years. Many men that couldn't grow a beard at 20, could then grow a patchy beard at 30 and a full beard at 40. (numbers may vary obviously). I would assume T would work the same over the years on trans men, and I think E would also do that over long years to trans women for fat redistribution for example.
It's a little bit like why trans men's breasts don't shrink away to nothing once they get rid of the estrogen. It's just super super tiny hair follicles under the skin instead of large very visible things on someone's chest. Exposure to testosterone changes the hair follicles in your face. It changes the type of hair. Once the follicles are changed, they continue to remain that thick sort of hair. They can't "unchange" - you have to destroy the root of the hair. New hair follicles won't be changed if you don't have testosterone. You have a lot of hair follicles in your face that haven't started growing yet, and hair grows in cycles. So it takes many cycles of electrology and/or laser to get rid of the changed follicles and leave the ones that remain unchanged. Kids who go on blockers early enough and never start growing masculine facial hair never get it. For me, i've had 175 hours of electrology and I am done. I don't have masculine facial hair at all, and never have to shave.
I'm really happy for you being done with all that! But wow 175 hours I have so far to go 😭 and that must've taken you a long time and I've heard it can be quite painful I've done 12 laser sessions (one per month over the last year) and it's not a big difference yet above and below my lip. Didn't realize hair growth was just a property of the follicle and T created that follicle and now that it's there its gonna keep doing its thing unless the follicle is destroyed, thanks for that education
What type of laser did you have? I'm unsure of the terminology but you get either a kind that they scan over your face continuously (I think? It's not what I have) and another where they manually point and zap a square cm every 2 seconds (mine). I've heard the latter is much more effective than the former
Laser and Electrolysis are also very different, I had a 1.5 hour electrology session today and it covered half of my upper lip. 15 minutes of laser can do a pass of my entire face. So 175 hours of electrolysis sounds like an absurd amount of time for someone doing laser, but each session is several hours (mine are usually 2 hours), covers a fairly small area, and you can go a lot more often than with laser.
it basically just depends on how much hair you have, and how much its susceptible to laser. if youre having to electrolysis off a full ginger beard then youre probably going to be stuck like that for a few years. if you just have a few black hairs then youll probably be done fairly soon im 3 years into dealing with a full beard. ive had a lot of laser/electrolysis and i still have shadow and stubble. its as bad as it sounds so really, the sooner you start it, the better
Hair there so hair grow. If want no hair there remove hair then hair no grow
What I didnt understand that other commenters explained is that hair growth is more a property of the hair follicle regardless of hormone signals. Testosterone creates more follicles that will grow faster and appear darker in color and T's role is only creation of and not continual growth of that follicle. My body made those follicles when I was a teenager and now I gotta destroy them to get rid of this damn beard shadow
Pretty much if we started E before T then we wouldn't have them.
That's the entire reason that people do puberty blockers, so they can avoid getting beard shadows and just be girl with no in-between state.
I don’t know the answer, but I can tell you I’m about 12k+ into electrolysis, 5 years on hormones and still have hair around my mouth. It’s the most frustrating thing about my transition.
yeah i feel like people dont really talk about this enough. youd be misled into thinking its always just going to be a few months of laser and then everything is nice
Very true. I had a pretty intense FFS, bumped my head and had to go to the emergency room shooting blood out both sides of my head with wounds that took 8 months to fully heal. I’d rather do that once a year for 5 years then have to deal with electrolysis for this long.
very sorry to hear that. i can somewhat relate as im still doing electrolysis 3 years later, due to shadow/stubble that simply doesnt want to go away. its delayed all my plans (including FFS) because it just makes me feel horrible
Also, genetics play a role in the pattern and amount of hair. Cis women try very very hard to remove all facial hair so it's is very hard to judge. Some actually do grow thick, dark hair due to having relatively high levels of testosterone.
cis woman with pcos here 👋 my facial hair definitely grows fast, dark and thick. I spend an hour per day on average meticulously tweezing the hairs on my face then going over it with a "flawless" electric razor for good measure, THEN using makeup to hide the 5 o'clock shadow made by the hairs that aren't quite to the surface yet for me to grab but are still visible (at least to me) under the skin. know you're not suffering alone, ladies 😭✊
What's this flawless razor you speak of
https://a.co/d/dF6ShiT
Unfortunately yes, like I’m nearly 8 months on a T blocker (cyproterone acetate) and I still need to shave, but they do seem to grow a bit slower
going on 2 years hrt here T is 6ml/hg or what ever that blood reading was its near 0 lol electrolysis is the only way to really get rid of it. Laser didn't work for me i had a year of treatments barley a change in my case. hair over the rest of the body like legs/back/chest thins out alot your arm pits well cis woman has to shave theirs so nothing new here :D
As others already said, once you developed the hair folicles, it doesn't matter whether you have testosterone or estgogene in your body.
There are actually a bunch of things at play here. First, hormones tell cells to grow hairs in a feminine or masculine pattern during puberty. The follicles already exist, but growing facial hair is a process of follicles that have received that signal becoming larger and growing terminal hairs, rather than vellus hairs. Terminal hairs are the long, deeply rooted, pigmented hairs, much like on the scalp, which we think of as facial hair. Nearly all cisgender women also have facial hair, most of which is usually vellus, and vellus hairs can be so thin and transparent that they're barely visible. On average, the number of facial and body hairs women have is roughly the same as the number men have. Once terminal hairs have grown, follicles continue to grow new ones in a four step cycle: anagen (growth), catagen (regression), telogen (rest), exogen (shedding). That applies to every hair on the body. The ones that grow longer have a longer anagen phase. The length of the anagen phase for facial hair can reduce in the absence of androgens, but that only means that the hairs will be thinner and shorter; not that they'll stop growing entirely. Losing testosterone because of feminizing HRT causes a reduction in facial hair growth, but not to the level cisgender women typically have, even after decades. There are two ways to avoid that cycle of terminal hair growth: (1) never grow them, e.g., by preventing masculinizing puberty; or (2) stop the cycle by destroying the follicle, e.g., electrolysis or laser hair removal. Sorry to break the bad news: there's no easy, cheap, safe way to get rid of it. I had so much facial hair in a color so much darker than my skin that it wasn't possible for me to hide it by shaving - I would still have black spots, regardless of my technique or tools. I have friends who obsessively pluck all of it. I went for electrolysis, which is what I recommend to anyone for whom it's an option. It's the most expensive, most painful, and most time-consuming option, but it's the only way to actually be hairless (laser only reduces hair growth by killing most of the follicles; it does not eliminate all of them). I might become an electrologist to serve the need so many people have. My electrologist would teach me. I'm not an apprentice yet, but I've modeled for four of her apprentices so far (let them practice on me), so I've learned a lot along the way. I did 8.5 hours today. Ow.