Quarantine has a lot of downsides. The crushing isolation, the unfathomable grief of mass death, the creeping feeling that we’re living through the literal apocalypse, the constant unconscious work of repressing all that so you can cross something meaningless off of your to-do list. But I have managed to find one silver lining: longer showers.
In the early days of quarantine, most of my time was booked up by either a Zoom call or the spontaneous crying that always followed a Zoom call. Showers provided a rare opportunity to stop panicking about all of the work I wasn’t doing, slow down, and take a moment to panic about something else.
On the 24th day of quarantine, I decided to take a shower in the middle of the day. I know it was daytime because I remember the sunlight disappearing as I closed my curtains. When I felt like being kind to myself, I would do the next part by the dim light leaking through the “blackout” cloth. This time, I did not feel like being kind to myself. I turned on all of the lamps in my room and took off all of my clothes. Then I stood in front of the mirror and stared.
I can’t remember how I reacted that time. Sometimes I would just stare at my body for a few moments and then move on. Sometimes I would flinch, but I always forced myself to look again. Sometimes I cried. I think I may have cried that time.
With that ritual out of the way, it was time to tweeze. Every week for the last decade, I’d removed the excess hair around my bushy brows, the random thick strays that pop up on my nose and chin, and, most importantly, the thicket of eye-catching baby hairs just above my upper lip. That day, for the first time in six weeks of hardly seeing anyone, I skipped the most crucial step and left my mustache alone. Then I took a very, very long shower.
Ten years earlier, I got onto the always-packed bus that took me home from school and stood in front of two girls who were traveling together. At some point, their conversation slowed and I could tell they were looking at me. I started to sweat under my uniform. I don’t think I was wearing headphones, but they must’ve assumed I couldn’t hear them because one of them asked the other aloud if she thought I was a girl or a boy. Then they started to argue about it. The one who thought I was a girl brought up my hair, but the other one said, “My brother has long hair too.” I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. The argument continued until the one who thought I was a boy wordlessly traced her finger across her upper lip in the shape of a handlebar mustache.
“I can hear you,” I said, so quickly it was embarrassing. “And I’m a girl.”
They feigned surprise so poorly that I instantly realized they’d known that I could hear them all along. Then the three of us rode in silence until I reached my stop and squeezed through the mass of human flesh to the door that was constantly asking people to move away. As soon as I got off the bus, I headed to the nearest pharmacy-slash-convenience-store chain and bought a pack of at-home wax strips. That night I waxed my upper lip for the first time. It hurt so bad I cried. The next day, every member of my family complimented me.
For the next ten years, I made sure to keep my upper lip hair to a minimum. At first, I waxed it every other week, but eventually I got tired of the pain and skin irritation and the acne I got from the oil I had to use to soothe the pain and skin irritation. I switched to tweezing, which hurt even more because it took so much longer. In those years, I came out (as bisexual), dated and broke up with my first girlfriend, dated and broke up with my first boyfriend, came out again (as a lesbian), and started exclusively wearing men’s clothes. In all that time, I kept ripping that hair out every other week.
Now, I imagine an alternate reality in which COVID-19 had never appeared and quarantine had never happened. Would I be typing something like this right now? Would I have hair on my face, or would it be smooth, red, and stinging? Would I know that I’m trans? Or would I still be pointing to that last vestige of my feminine presentation, that stretch of hairless skin above my upper lip, and screaming “I’m not one of them”?
The precious moments between the end of a Zoom call and the beginning of my tears were always devoted to my phone. As soon as a call ended, I would grab that hunk of glass and metal as if it were a floating door in a shipwreck and immediately open Twitter. Sometimes I searched for hashtags like #transmanthirstdae and scrolled through pictures of shirtless men and envied their scars. But often I would search for something easier for cis people to guess, like #translivesmatter, filter for the most recent tweets, and skim for people who used “transgender” as a noun, cis lesbians who proudly proclaimed their lack of interest in trans women, cis gay men who congratulated themselves for being satisfied with the body they were born with. Sometimes it was easy to find what I was looking for: At one point, all I needed to do was search for “J.K. Rowling.” I told myself I was looking for glimpses of my possible futures, but I lingered longest on the posts that told me that the path I longed for would certainly end in rejection or death. I can’t count the number of articles I read about recently murdered trans women and men, or the number of posts that implied that that’s what we deserve.
When I stripped down and stood in front of the mirror, the disembodied voices of my online enemies ricocheted through my mind. I asked myself if the pain I felt looking at my reflection was worse than the pain I would be setting myself up for if I told the truth. I demanded proof that I was dysphoric enough to require intervention. I forced myself to perform the pain that cis people expect to see before they deign to admit that we might be justified in seeking out lives that fulfill us. I wondered if I might be better off dead.
Week after week, I watched as my baby hairs grew in and obscured the masculine hairline I’d tried so hard to maintain in my pre-COVID life. I watched my body shrink as I lost track of how many months it’d been since I went to the gym. The short expanse of skin between my nose and upper lip became one of the few regions of my own body I could still control. If I’m being honest, I think I grew out my mustache to distract myself from the rest of my body. I learned to look myself in the eye until I could see myself for the person I knew I was instead of the person other people said I should be. Without surgery or hormones, I couldn’t do much about my body—but I could stop punishing my face and torturing my mind for not being sufficiently feminine. I couldn’t stop other people from expecting me to be someone I never was, but I could stop asking myself to play along.
And once I did, I realized that the people who mattered most to me never wanted me to suppress myself. My little brother — the fiercest ally I’ve ever met — texted me to ask if I’d rather be referred to by pronouns other than she/her. I didn’t reply. My girlfriend and my best friend — both queer women — asked me the same question in person. I got spooked and half-stepped, asking them to switch to they/them but forcing them to swear they wouldn’t use those pronouns for me in front of anyone else.
I took a shower a few hours ago. I didn’t look in the mirror beforehand because I didn’t want to. Afterward, I caught my own eye in the mirror as I stepped out of the shower and began to cry. I looked at my own face contorted with pain and told myself, “You can do this.” And then I smiled.
Few living Americans have seen a more trying time than this one. But if there’s anyone who knows how to look at a hopeless, joyless present and somehow imagine a bright and beautiful future, it’s us. All of us.
Congratulations! I stopped tweezing for months too and my mustache came back but perhaps most impressive was my scraggly but very distinct beard. I ended up tweezing again as I’m just not brave enough yet and also wasn’t sure I really liked the look for myself or the itchiness level. But it felt really good to play around with. I’d been tweezing since puberty so I’d literally never seen what my face was capable of, and it is impressive.
I took photos and I’ve been wondering how many other folks did something like this over quarantine? Photo gallery idea?
Yeah I briefly stopped grooming my face at the beginning of quarantine, and I had A LOT of facial hair, even a scraggly beard. I resumed grooming again but it was interesting to let all my hair on my face grow out. I normally shave my legs all summer long but I didn’t this summer. Something about the end of the world just makes me feel like saying “fuck it” and doing what I want and not caring about what people think. I want to be comfortable at the end of the world.
Yup. Stopped shaving. Grew a Van Dyke with a light mustache and surprisingly long (until I trimmed it) chin beard. It’s actually kinda attractive, but then I always did like Van Dykes and goatees. I did take pix.
Love the photo gallery idea! I can absolutely relate on going back and forth—since writing this article, I’ve gone back to tweezing but only my brows. Just not ready to commit to a unibrow, y’know?
I love this so much! Congratulations!
Thank you!
What a lovely article! Thank you for sharing your experiences ♡
Note for fellow commenters who remove upper lip and chin hair (as I do, though I’m pretty lax about it) — shaving with a disposable (or refillable!) men’s facial razor is ***so*** much less painful and so much quicker as well. Like, ninety painless seconds every week or so and I’m good to go.
I’ve always been scared to shave because of that rumor that it grows back faster and thicker (I love my mustache, but not *that* much). Would love to hear if you’ve noticed any difference in your facial hair since you started shaving it.
Google is your friend when trying to learn anything about anything, or just busting myths: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/hair-removal/faq-20058427#
“No — shaving hair doesn’t change its thickness, color or rate of growth.
Shaving facial or body hair gives the hair a blunt tip. The tip might feel coarse or “stubbly” for a time as it grows out. During this phase, the hair might be more noticeable and perhaps appear darker or thicker — but it’s not.”
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I had extensive electrolysis in my 20s & the electrologist warned me that women’s hormone surge in your 30s can lead to NEW hair growth. It did, but a bit later.
I now have less mustache than before, less rogue eyebrow and hairline hairs, but have lots of neck-beard I never had before. Due to age, I have less body hair. But I have grown a whole pandemic Van Dyke. Go figure.
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I made my peace (more or less) with my physically “masculine” attributes (extensive and dark facial and body hair) as well as my “feminine” ones (36D at age 14, J-Lo @ss before it was cool) and while I briefly wondered if I were a fey, campy nancy-boy trapped in a serious, logical dyke…I decided I was what I was (XX-female) and would simply continue to reject society’s “performative” gender roles and be the girl/woman I was–a lot of both “gender” stereotypes, sometimes kinda neither, nerdy, genderqueerish, androgynous, woman-loving-woman.
“I looked at my own face contorted with pain and told myself, “You can do this.” And then I smiled.
Few living Americans have seen a more trying time than this one. But if there’s anyone who knows how to look at a hopeless, joyless present and somehow imagine a bright and beautiful future, it’s us. All of us.”
Oof.
This went in a direction I wasn’t totally expecting but that I needed to hear. Thank you.
tbh, I wasn’t expecting this direction either. Glad you enjoyed it!
I loved this essay.
After years and years of getting my eyebrows done–waxing, threading, and then just plucking them myself for the past few years–I decided to try growing them out fully. I expected to have a luscious unibrow after a few weeks, but now months have passed and the space between my brows just has sporadic hairs! I’m disappointed! Was I never going to have a unibrow? Did my family mislead me about how my hair would grow? Did years of hair removal damage the follicles irreparably? I guess we’ll never know.
I lie awake at night wondering what my mustache might have been if I hadn’t damaged it with years of waxing and tweezing. Could it have been as luscious as your potential unibrow? The world may never know.
This is beautiful and I feel you so hard. For the first time ever, thanks to quarantine I guess, I can let my underwhelming kinda-beard grow in and have the soft chin scruff I never imagined I would love so much. Haven’t made peace with the sad excuse of a mustache yet, I still shave that, but I have never been more comfortable as a nonbinary person than I am now with this lil beardling.
Congrats! Wish I had anything happening on my chin.
“My girlfriend and my best friend — both queer women — asked me the same question in person.”
I’ll never forget the good friend who asked why I continued to be called by [what I now know as] my deadname. “Wouldn’t you rather be called [by what was already my online name] J.C.?”
That made all the difference.
Welcome to the nonbinary (FWIW, I still prefer “genderqueer”) side of life, Rae!
Thank you! Friends can really make all the difference in moments like these—IRL and online.
Oof, I felt this in my gut. Thank you for sharing your experiences, Rae — what a beautiful essay
Thank you! My apologies to your gut.
Very here for the nonbinary content and the learning to be comfortable with yourself content, but also the number of people acknowledging that people who aren’t AMAB or on T do grow facial hair! Nobody says this ever. Thanks.
Seriously, people treated me like a freak for years because of my perfectly natural facial hair. I’m hoping to start T eventually, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got for now.
It is possible to be a GNC woman, or even a woman who does not tweeze all her body hair, and still live a normal life. Having body hair or choosing not to wax your face daily doesn’t mean you’re some strange new species other than a garden variety woman with better things to do than focus on societal standards of feminine perfection.
Thank you so much for this, Olivia. Right on! Readers: You don’t have to redefine yourself according to current societal gender norms or label yourself as a trendy outlier. Be yourself, people, and by doing so you will redefine the gender norms themselves!
Yup. Stopped shaving. Grew a Van Dyke with a light mustache and surprisingly long (until I trimmed it) chin beard. It’s actually kinda attractive, but then I always did like Van Dykes and goatees. Along with men’s clothes.
Facial and body hair (and clothes preferences) don’t define my sex or gender. I’m still a cis gay woman (dyke). I still have long hair and big tits. I’m rather enjoying being physically genderqueer/genderfucking…in the mirror during pandemic.
No, I don’t want the attention or weirdness of doing it in public, so I’ll go back to shaving or get laser when it’s time to take off the mask or do a Zoom meeting.
I’m too lazy, cheap, “don’t care” to bother with my “excessive” body hair though, so I just wear long sleeves and long pants. Some day I may get laser hair removal, just for the aesthetics. I don’t care much for lots of body hair on *any* human being, so I can understand that many women may not care for it on me.
Thank you so much for this, Olivia. Right on! Readers: You don’t have to redefine yourself according to current societal gender norms or label yourself as a trendy outlier. Be yourself, people, and by doing so you will redefine the gender norms themselves!