I’m sure you heard from your dad, however, to shave in the opposite direction of hair growth when you shave your face. Or if you use an electric razor, you have to go in circles AND up and down. Well the same goes for the rest of your body (mostly), which makes sense . . . but most people don’t realize what direction their hair actually grows. Actually, I know a lot of girls who don’t even bother trying to figure it out because their hair is fine enough that it doesn’t matter. But for crossdressers with coarse hair, this can make a huge difference.

Before going into details, let me just say that if you have long hair (ie first time shaving or it’s been awhile), make a first pass over everything WITH the hair growth – your razor was designed for a certain hair length, and if your hair is too long it will pull the skin up close to the blade (like it’s supposed to) and then clog up and pull the hair instead of cutting or worse yet pull the skin too hard and nick you. In either event, your skin will swell a bit and your final pass will just cut and scrape you up instead of giving you a nice clean shave. Shaving with the hair prevents the blades from pulling the skin close to the blade and instead just chops off the long part of the hair, leaving stubble that you can take off with your final pass which will go AGAINST the hair growth.

Now that that’s out of the way . . . your body hair grows in circles. Yes, really. But that’s ok, they’re predictable circles. We’ll start at the top and work down. Back hair for the most part grows down and towards your spine. Forget about shaving this exactly with the growth on the first pass (try just shaving up, that should work), but for the final pass this is rather convenient because shaving up and out (towards your shoulder) is a reasonably natural motion. At least, as natural as shaving your own back can be . . . And just for clarity, “out (towards your shoulder)” is in a different direction for your left and right side.

Moving to your front, chest hair grows in a similar pattern – the upper chest hair largely points to the center of your chest, while hairs around your nipples and lower point a bit more downward but still somewhat inwards. Hairs close to your nipples probably make a bit of a swirl pattern, growing around the nipple but usually never growing upwards. That means if you start with an up-stroke shaving your chest, you will mostly be trimming longer hairs but also catching the handful of hairs the grown downwards. Then finish with an out-stroke to get a smooth finish on the majority of hairs that grow inwards. Go around the left side of your nipples starting from the bottom and going left, up, and around to the top. Go around the right side of your nipples starting from the bottom and going right, up, and around to the top. Don’t shave over your nipple directly unless you want to take it off though! Getting the center of your chest and over your collarbone is tricky, but do it the same way you shave your jaw-line – skin is stretchy, so pull it away from the edge of the bone so that it’s (relatively) flat and taught. Don’t be tempted to press hard to shave a concavity (like the center of your chest) because it won’t work and is almost guaranteed to cut you in the process.

Underarms, this is an interesting one. Underarm hair grows in 3 directions – down (at the bottom), up (at the top), and towards your back (center). I usually shave up first, then down, and then towards my chest – this last direction hits some of the more sensitive hairs and goes over some large muscle ridges, so do it carefully. But if you don’t shave all 3 directions you’ll end up with ugly stubble. Again, be careful to flatten the skin as much as you can, and don’t press hard. These ridges are mostly muscles, so just relax your arm as much as you can, and you should be able to get them to go away (though maybe only one at a time).

Arms . . . arm hair on the side near your thumb grows down, so you can take out most of it with nice easy upwards strokes (towards your shoulder). Hair on the other side of your arm though grows in a couple directions. Some of it is down, much of it grows around your arm (towards your inner arm, the side without much hair), and some of it right near your wrist actually grows up.

Most belly hair grows down and slightly inwards. Hair around the navel grows towards the navel though, so you’ll need to take some little strokes in each direction out away from your navel.

Butt hair (don’t laugh!) grows in two directions. Mostly it grows down, however, the closer you get to the center of your body, the more hairs point inward. You’ll probably need to cover your entire butt with both up-strokes and out-strokes. Hair on your perineum (between your butt and your balls) grows towards your back, as does hair on your balls. Hair around the edge of your penis points down the shaft. Be really careful with this hair though, it’s super sensitive.

Hair on the front and back of your thigh grows down, but hair on the sides points around the leg towards the back. This goes for hair near your crotch too, which can be really difficult to shave. Don’t forget that skin stretches – if you pull it down your leg and go over the area, then pull it in to your crotch and go over it again, you can usually pick up all the hair though.

Hair on the lower legs grows down, and hair on the feet grows towards your toes. These are actually really easy areas to shave if you’re just very careful about bones and joints. Don’t try to just go straight over a ridge or protrusion, slow down and make sure the razor stays on a flat surface. That means you’ll have to shave each face of the joint separately, and then move the skin a bit to shave the apex. But you won’t have any cuts if you do that!

And that’s it, now you’re all clean shaved and sexy smooth

I guess it would help if I did a better job keeping up with lathering myself in lotion, but when it’s so damn cold that the lotion gives me goosebumps too, I don’t exactly look forward to doing it. Plus goosebumps stimulate hair growth and feel really icky when you have mostly shaved but really thick hair follicles. I get so disgusted though if I have any hair growing if from not shaving . . . so I can only stand a couple days and then I just soak in lotion for a night and shave everything off the next morning. I’m such a girl

The other thing that’s terrible about the cold weather is not getting any sun. I’m not one to go tanning or anything, and I actually like girls (myself included) who are a little pale . . . but a little dose of sunshine on a daily basis goes a long way for clearing up my skin and keeping it smooth. I would totally buy a tanning bed and use it for 2 min/day all winter. I wonder if that would be worth the money . . .

I know, I just need to move somewhere that doesn’t have cold winters . . .

Ran out of tape on the camera though, and don’t have enough disk space to download! There’s a sign I have too many photos of myself on my computer, right? So now I’ve got to sit around in my boobs and a t-shirt (they look good in a t-shirt though, believe it or not!) waiting for 10 or 15 gig of files to copy over to my other computer so I can dump the video tape and get on to the next set. Rough life, right?

At least I’ve got something fun to play with under my shirt . . .

But to really keep up with shaving, I’d have to do my entire body every day. And my skin doesn’t take too well to that routine. Ow, my skin (homestar runner anyone?). So instead I stick to: day 1 – shave; day 2 – lots of Aveeno Shave Minimizing Lotion; day 3 – Nads XFol Exfoliating Scrub, and more lotion; day 4 – repeat.

Yep, it’s a pain. So I don’t want to hear any more females complaining about having to shave their legs once a week to stay silky smooth. But it’s worth the work, because frankly if I get lazy (or busy) and let my hair grow out a bit, I find it absolutely repulsive and have to get rid of it at my first opportunity. Or wear lots of layers of clothes so I don’t have to look at myself. Neurosis? Maybe.

As soon as I can afford it or find a kind T-girl loving plastic surgeon, I’m getting all of my hair lasered off. Goodbye hair. All of it except the top of my head. And one of these days I will grow that out again because I’m also tired of wigs. But that’s another story. Enough of my rant