It’s not what you think…
Just when we thought we had heard of everything comes a new beauty trend even we didn’t see coming.
Women are raiding their SO’s (that’s Significant Other, for non Gen Y-ers) bathroom stash and shaving their faces, all in the name of anti-ageing.
It turns out the practice of shaving one’s face isn’t just reserved for guys sporting stubble. It’s also a skincare trick dermatologists have been performing in their clinics for years.
If you’ve ever cried at the injustice that men get so fewer wrinkles than women as they age, you were already onto something.
Regularly shaving your face not only cuts off stubble, it also sloughs away a layer of dead skin cells, revealing new, youthful skin, which is nourished to baby soft quality thanks to shaving cream, one of the best skincare products around, as it turns out.
Elizabeth Taylor’s dermatologist is rumoured to have spilled that Taylor was a regular face-shaver
High quality shaving creams with conditioning agents actually have the effect of softening and nourishing the skin if left on for a minute or two prior to shaving, unlike cheaper solutions, which tend to contain surfactants, the ingredients that make aerosol-based creams foam, which can dry out the skin by making it more alkaline.
Esthetician Kerry Benjamin says the process of shaving the face to promote more youthful skin is effective because it mimics the procedure of dermaplaning, typically performed by dermatologists.
“Shaving your face can have somewhat similar results to a professional dermaplane procedure. Dermaplaning provides a deeper exfoliation than shaving at home, but they both remove the dead outer skin and vellus hairs,” Benjamin told byrdie.com.
And it’s something beauty icons have known about for quite some time. Elizabeth Taylor’s dermatologist is rumoured to have spilled that Taylor was a regular face-shaver, as were flawless skin idols Marilyn Monroe and Cleopatra.
So, crazy as it sounds, this is one weird beauty trend that actually has merit.
Have your say: Would you use this practice in your salon, or recommend it to your clients?
6 thoughts on “Women Shaving Their Faces For A VERY Unusual Reason”
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What about facial hair becoming more thicker and darker?
Shaving doesn’t cause hair to grow thicker or darker. Hair naturally grows out tapered i.e. the part of the hair strand closest to your skin is usually “thicker” (and tends to be darker) but it thins out and lightens up towards the end/tip of the strand. The ends/tips of our hair strands are old, and with “old age”, special cells in the hair called melanocytes (that give hair strands their colour) start to lose their depth of colour, making the tips appear lighter and a little less noticeable when unshaved.
Think of a strand of hair like an unsharpened colour pencil. When you sharpen the colour pencil, the coloured outer covering and wood flake/peel off and the tip becomes progressively thinner. Hair does the same thing all on its own. Now, if you were to chop off just the tip of the colour pencil, the pencil would just be a stick, with an even diameter from top to bottom, covered in a colour covering…just like shaved hair 🙂
When you shave your hair, what happens is that you’re just chopping off the naturally lighter and thinned out tip of the hair, leaving you with hair strands that only look thicker and darker but luckily, this is temporary. As our hair strands continue to grow out, some of them will fall out when they reach their full length and regrow in their naturally tapered shape or, as the hair strands grow out, the cells on the tips of the hair strands get old, lose their colour and some hair cells flake off (like the pencil being sharpened) which thins out the tips again.
In term of facial hairs, these hairs are usually thin, short and have very few colour cells/melanocytes in the entire strand and not just the tips, making them quite unnoticeable. They are called vellus hairs. They also grow out in the naturally tapered shape and if you shave them, because their entire strand is light in colour, they won’t look any thicker or darker than before you shaved them.
Note, however, that In women, hormonal imbalances and/or hereditary/genetic predisposition to darker, thicker facial hairs, like the hairs described at the beginning of my post ,will be more likely to cause the hairs on the face to look thicker and darker when shaved, but, other than that, facial shaving, when done properly, shouldn’t be a problem.
I think I’ll stick to my AHA’s!
Very interesting, in that as one of the leading men’s grooming brands (men-u), we have always advised men on the healthy skin aspect of shaving by mentioning that they go through a degree of exfoliation that a woman can only dream of! Perhaps we have to make a slight change to this comment? The key with men & shaving is to make it as benefit orientated as possible and a smooth surface ie cutting of the beard is only part. In terms of healthy skin, the exfoliation is far more important. We also advise deep cleansing after shaving. It is the process of exfoliation & cleansing after that we think helps the condition of teenage boys skin improve, when they start shaving. Whilst our products are very high quality, we will continue to market these to men but interesting article. Graham Fish Founder men-u (available in Australia)
I think shaving causes hard and strong hair on our body . That’s why we don’t use shaving style.I use epilator for avoid unwanted hair on my body . Waxing is more painfull process so I dont like it. If you have good epilator as a women you will have smoother body . I have Panasonic wet and dry epilator and I saw great reviews about it on http://www.smoothskinlab.com/
That sounds nasty… why not just get a peel or better yet exfoliate your face? Duh. There are other ways of exfoliating besides using a razor. These people are dumb. If you do actual have facial hair use laser hair removal http://www.findmyhomelaser.com/ If not exfoliate. Problem solved.