The advances in cosmetic surgery and especially hair depletion and exfoliation techniques leads me to wondering why such advances haven’t made it into the realm of male-dom. Why is there electrolysis, creams, waxes and other such devices of hair removal for legs, under-arms, bikini lines, and unsightly facial hairs, and yet males are required to scrape the hairs off their face with a sharp blade, or electronic whisker cutting device every day?

Why can I not book a session with a beauty therapist and have my facial hairs all removed in a semi-permanent way, meaning I am not required to perform my morning ritual of scraping the unwanted facial-growth off? Perhaps this is related to the issue of national breast screening for cancer (in this country), whereas prostate cancer gets little to no support, let alone funding, to become one of the highest proportion of deadly cancers today.

If waxing worked on the facial hairs of a male, would it become an accepted form of hair removal? This could be performed in the comfort and privacy of ones own home, and the result would be a clean, cut-free, smooth finish that lasts for days. Another method, electrolysis, relies on killing the hair at the root by passing a current down each individual hair. This is a very costly exercise but lasts for several days.

There must be other methods of facial hair depletion for males, but it appears the emphasis on finding a safe, yet effective, method is not forthcoming. In the meantime I will continue cutting, nicking, rasping and plucking these facial whiskers with sharpened steel blades until science for males catches up with the advances made for females.

One of the reasons that women are able to wax their legs is that the hair growth is often much more sparse, resulting in less of a problem with terribly reddened skin (though it is still painful). The hairs on a man's face are dense, and often thicker than leg hairs, which would result in tremendous pain, and unavoidable short term blotchy redness. It is for this reason that the majority of wax aficionados do not wax their underarms.

There are, by the way, depilatories meant for facial hair removal for men. They can be found in the "ethnic" hair care section of most drugstores in larger cities, as it is a problem for African American men sometimes to shave. Curly hair tends to bend back toward the follicle and cause ingrown hairs.
Commercial hair removal centers that use electrolysis or laser hair removal do not focus specifically on the female. They are willing to use these methods for guys, whether for facial hair, or body hair. However, they are not cheap - each laser session runs in the hundreds of dollars, and while electrolysis varies from $40 to $100 per hour, complete clearing of all facial hair can take hundreds of hours, depending on the type and thickness of that hair.

Heck, there are enough male-to-female transsexual clients removing that hair to make it worthwhile for some attention to be paid to that kind of hair removal.

As far as products to be used at home, there hasn't seemed to be much of an outcry from the male populace to convince companies to focus on it. After all, the face really isn't that big of an area, it doesn't take that long - and if you don't believe me, try shaving your legs just once - that's why better methods would be appreciated.

And perhaps a little more latitude given to guys as far as how close they're shaven as compared to women.

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