I was in college! I think I might’ve been 19 or 20 at the time. That’s when I started plucking my brows doing stuff to remove my upper lip hair. And it all started with facial bleach, which was…not my most genius idea, LOL! Because I just ended up looking like a girl with an orange mustache.
When I was sort of coming of age in the ’90s, facial hair, at least in the circles I ran in, wasn’t a big deal. Like, all of the girls I knew in high school had upper lip hair, and nobody ever did anything about it. It was just there. No big deal.
And I definitely had upper lip hair because — UGH! — this boy who allegedly liked me in freshman year would come around at lunchtime and just say ridiculous things, like, “Ooh, do you have a mustache? Because it looks like you have a mustache. I wonder what it’s like to kiss a girl with a mustache!” ?
You know, typical 14-year-old boy… That’s how they spit game. LOL!
Anyway, I was aware of it (the hair) back then, but I didn’t do anything about it until I was in college.
I don’t know if that was because I was busy with band and studying (I was a nerd). I think it was more just a sign of the times. No one I knew really talked about hair removal or brow plucking at the time, and it wasn’t a thing in the magazines (“the” magazines, LOL!). I don’t recall Seventeen doing an extensive exposé on removing your upper lip hair or anything like that!
It’s interesting, though, because my friend Jen has a bunch of cousins who are all about 15 years younger than we are (but they aren’t so young anymore; they’re getting married and having kids!), and I remember that they started plucking their brows and waxing their upper lips when they were younger than Jen and I were when we started doing it. I think they were like 13 or 14 when they started doing that stuff.
I don’t know… Do girls start removing their upper lip hair at that age now? I hope not! I want Connor Claire to be blissfully unaware of it as long as she can.
How old were you when you started doing any sort of facial hair removal?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. TGIF! 🙂
P.P.S. Are you watching the Super Bowl on Sunday? I think we’re pulling for Atlanta around here, just to give someone new a chance, LOL.
I think I was 12. It was definitely an eyebrow thing lol.
I was actually 15 and this was not facial hairs. I actually started facial hair removal way later, around 20!
Ummm…your hair looks amazing!
Same age. And I actually prefer facial bleaching to tweezing. I learned how to monitor the bleaching time so that I removed the bleach once the upper lip hair matched my skin tone. :p
Lilac is a great shade on you!
I got a hold of my mom’s tweezers at around 12 and started tweezing my brows then. That was fun.
My eyebrows (used to) grow together across the top of my nose, so I started plucking between them around age 12 or 13, probably around the same time I started shaving my legs and underarms. The rest of my facial hair is pretty downy, so I never bothered with it until after menopause, when it started growing to ridiculous lengths. Since my skin is sensitive and the hair is fine and pale, I just remove it every couple of weeks with a beard trimmer. Otherwise it looks like I have a halo around my cheeks and chin when the light hits my face a certain way.
I started plucking my eyebrows and colouring my hair when I was 12. Have never looked back!
Eyebrows I probably was like 15, but facial hair just recently so in my 30s.
12 or 13…My mother wanted me to wax my legs in the hope that eventually I would not have to remove hair at all because it would all have been eliminated. You know the drill. Also, we did my moustache and eyebrows. Would also do the Jolene bleach thing on the moustache sometimes. Not sure what I would have done had I been left to my own devices.
In college I had a function where I was wearing a strapless dress. I had a blond friend, who didn’t know from bleaching colored fuzzy hair, help me Jolene my back. While the cream was doing its thang, she very hesitantly and earnestly offered that perhaps all the white on my back was no better than the dark peach fuzz….
Hey Karen!
Lavender looks gorgeous on you!
I started with my brows in high school but I think I was in college when I started with the other hormonal areas >_> The only thing I worried about before then was the acne -__- Should’ve listened to my MD when she said that I should wax my untouched leg hairs when I first started >_<
Hi Karen,
This post made me laugh. Let me remember, I never plucked my brows until late into my thirties (I’ve had pretty good brows) i just had them filled in with 6d Microblading which is awesome!! I also bleached my very scarce upper lip hair in my teens and my husband was the first to help me wax it off. LOL.
I started mistreating my brows in the 90s when I was around 14-15 years old and have regretted it ever since 🙂
Mid-late 20s, but not because it wasn’t there before. That’s just when I decided to remove it!! I agree with you, it really used to be no big deal for a lot of people. I’m happy with my look now but was happy with it then, too! Times change, people change, etc. 🙂
I plucked my brows forever beginning in HS !
Now so had to have them micro bladed !
I had a 5 th grade student ??? once who had a mustache !
Other students made fun of her ; I was able to get her older sister to take her to get waxed ! Things were better after that !
18 and brows!
I started getting my eyebrows waxed when I was maybe fifteen, but mostly because my mom told me I looked like a maniac, lol! I still am lucky enough to not have to worry about lip hairs (I pluck one here and there but overall they aren’t that dark!) but I DO have weekly battles with those god forsaken dark prickly chin hairs!! gaaah!!
I think I plucked my eyebrows sometime in high school. I still don’t really do any facial hair removal other than that. The hair on my chin and upper lip is a very pale blond, so it’s not really visible on my skin tone. I got lucky, because most of the women in my mom’s family have issues with facial hair.
No way! Only yesterday I was looking up facial hair removal kit reviews and I thought “I bet Karen has written about this, I’ll have to search past M&BB posts”. I started tweezing my brows after a few girls in my year 9 class (1995) started making fun of mine (they would sit in home group tweezing each other’s brows before the teacher arrived). I wish they were done professionally but my mum was against touching them so I tried it myself, sigh. I started removing the upper lip hair when I was in my late 20’s, not sure if it became more obvious or it just started to bother me more. Now I assume that’s all people look at when it’s there! Silly but oh well. Once a friend referred to my upper lip hair in a conversation at a group dinner (after staring at it all night), I don’t think I’ve ever quite forgiven him and now I’m even more paranoid about it ?.
I didn’t do anything with my eyebrows until my mid-thirties (I was not going near the ultra-thin eyebrow fad). I didn’t need to do my upper lip till around the same time. Perimenopausal chin hairs in my mid-40s.
I was 14 or 15 when I started getting my lip waxed because a cute boy teased me about it! And not long after my aunt who was a beautician started trying to tame my brows!
Lilac is definitely a great color for you. Love the hair! so I’m looking either one up above that I wish I never would have touched my eyebrows in high school. But now all kinds of hair on my face that I would love to get rid. Karen what is your routine for removing your facial ? I would really like to remove all the little peach fuzz on my cheekbones. Anyone have any suggestions?
I just read something on threading. Is this the way to go?
I loved threading. I get my brows done and my upper lip. It’s fast but sometimes if the person is not as experienced they can break the hairs like on my upper lip. It’s cheap too, 7 bucks for both where I love. Feels like tiny paper cuts for 2 minutes while they work but goes away immediately and no redness or ingrown hairs for me. And no burning like with wax. Look up videos to see what it looks like
I was probably about 12? About a year after I started shaving my armpits and legs. I hit puberty somewhat early and I come from a… follically blessed family (although I’m lucky in that the hair is light in color). It was actually my mom’s idea, she’s the one who got me started on eyebrows and upper lip. I know that might be strange for a lot of people, I know a lot of parents don’t want their kids starting cosmetics and things so young. Puberty was super rough on me and I was so shy and uncomfortable with my body and I desperately didn’t want to stick out.
I usually don’t bother with my upper lip nowadays since the hair is fair in color. Sometimes I use an eyebrow razor to remove peach fuzz all over my cheeks, chin, and lip before an event to make my foundation lay smoother but that’s about it.
I keep waffling back and forth about grooming my eyebrows. I’ll grow them out for a few months and they’ll be glorious gigantic caterpillars marching across my face, but then I’ll feel self-conscious if someone mentions them so I’ll clean them up.
I’m glad you posted this question, it’s been interesting to see everyone’s responses and how attitudes towards facial hair have changed back and forth. It’s such a personal thing too, especially when you’re young.
My friend in high school plucked her brows so much one of them never grew back. I think she just got carried away. So I didn’t touch mine because of that. (I was also a studious nerd.) I think I might have started plucking a few strays and trying to give them a little shape when my daughter was in elementary school. So mid to mid-late thirties? Just recently started to address the whiskers that have begun sprouting on my upper lip and chin. Guess I’m just a late bloomer when it comes to this stuff.
I started having my brows done at 14 I think. Got a unibrow and my teenage self hated it but wasn’t confident enough to tackle it herself.
I don’t remember the exact age, but it was in junior high that I started getting my brows and lip waxed. I’m thankful my mom took the initiate and got me into that salon every couple of weeks. However, it eventually got out of control and I ended up with the lovely late 90s, early 2000s teeny brows that took years to grow back. But hey, at least I didn’t have to worry about my ‘stash. My 10 year old daughter has become aware of her upper lip hair in the last couple of months. It’s blonde so I don’t really even see it, but she is starting to get self conscious about it. I had really hoped we had longer before these things started!
Only started a few years ago…probably when I was 24 or 25? I want to say 26 even! I was blissfully unaware of anything ‘wrong’ to do with my facial hair.
It was better for me, personally, to start later in my life because it was a decision I made on my own, not out of peer pressure or my mom telling me to do it! I also felt comfortable enough to just rock my upper lip hair and luscious brows so it’s good for me to know that if I ever gave up on this maintenance, I could (possibly) be ok with it. 😛
Ugh facial hair is the worst! I started plucking/waxing my brows in 7th grade so 12-13. I started with bleach for my upper lip around the same time because I got made fun of about it too. I moved to Nair in 9th grade then started waxing in college. Its never ending!
I think it was in my teens. I remember using that Sally Hansen hair removal cream which smelled bad and was harsh. Thank goodness they’ve improved them by now.
I was in college when I started tweezing my brows but I started bleaching my upper lip hair in high school. Until my dad pointed out that I was turning my upper lip an odd yellow shade and suggested I find another hair removal method. That’s when I started using depilatory. 32 years later, I’m thinking about electrolysis for my upper lip because it grows back so fast. If I don’t use depilatory every Sunday night I have a real problem.
You didn’t ask about age of first body hair removal but I will tell you anyway. When I was in third grade I used a razor to shave all the hair off my arms. I was really, really hairy and I hated it. My mom was so angry at me when she found out. But she didn’t understand, she has almost no body hair. While I had the hairy legs and arms of a Chewbaca. Not fair.
Oh my goodness! I could have written this post. I’m Indian and am super hairy. But my mom is totally hairless and wasn’t into beauty or fashion. When I was in 8th grade, a boy I had the biggest crush on used to mine shaving and make fun of me. I didn’t know what to do and luckily didn’t shave my face!
After 8th grade, I started plucking my mono brow. I didn’t know what else to do with my face.
Finally in early college I discovered cold wax strips. Yeah!!
Now, I use threading and dermaplaning and this self hair removal coil.
Oddly enough as a grownup (now 42), my facial hair is thinner. I do wish my brows were thicker but aside from that- I’m pretty ok.