Transition Update 1 – Day 15: Hair Removal

Day 15

I’m half a month into the process of hormone therapy, and there’s no changes to report yet. Sadly, I think it’ll be a while before I start to see changes take place. However, since starting the hormones my appetite has been crazy. A meal that would normally make me full now leaves me hungry an hour or two later. I estimate that I might be eating 50% more calories per day. Despite that, I’ve lost about five pounds in two weeks, which is really high since I reached my weight loss goal a couple of months ago. Hopefully the need for food is a good sign.

My main subject for this update is the electrolysis, AKA hair removal. There’s two ways to remove hair: electrolysis and laser. Laser unfortunately doesn’t work on people with light colored hair such as blonde, red, white, and grey, nor does it work on people with dark skin. Because of my red hair, I need to go for the electrolysis. Here’s a general breakdown of the differences between electrolysis and laser.

I’m not necessarily sure I’m sad that I can’t do laser removal, but it might depend on the difference in the pain level. I’ve never tried laser, but I’ve heard it hurts, but not as much as electrolysis. The pain level of electrolysis can vary on the settings being used, and where it’s hitting. Some places are fine, and some places make you cringe. I’d say the pain is moderate, but it depends on your tolerance for pain. You can get numbing cream if you choose to, but I haven’t tried that yet.

There’s a lot of different settings and modes to electrolysis, so it took several sessions for us to dial in to something that works effectively, and doesn’t hurt too much. After the first 6 or 7 hours, we found one that works best we think. She’s never has a pure redhead before, so it’s been difficult for her to figure out what to do. Red hair is sensitive, yet difficult to remove (yay me!), so I need a higher voltage than normal. The nice thing is that there’s no lingering pain after the session is over.

If you need to do electrolysis when you transition, START EARLY. It’s a very long process, and you don’t want to be looking female and still have lots of body hair. Heck, it should take months to do my face, and I go in two to four hours per week. Also, you need to go in with at least three days worth of growth, so doing this while you’re a woman would be awkward. Start early while you’re still a guy.

My other advice to anyone doing electrolysis is to keep it clean. Don’t touch the areas that were worked on for about two days afterward. Also clean the area twice a day for the two days afterward using Witch Hazel and Neosporin cream. I developed red spots and acne on my face at first, but it’s clearing up now that I’m cleaning it.

Here’s the results after 12 total hours of electrolysis over about a month. She’s focused mostly on my cheeks, but she’s also been removing scattered hairs around the jawline. When my cheeks are looking more clear, we’ll probably start on my neck because it would look very weird to hair no hair on your face, but have some on your neck. I’m not looking forward to it though because the neck have difficult to remove hairs, and it’s very sensitive.