as small as a world and as large as alone, So when I first turned my ask on, I got a very...

2:23pm May 23, 2014

So when I first turned my ask on, I got a very rude question about my facial hair, and I did not answer it at the time. Understand that this is not an answer to that person, because I don’t believe in answering assholes in this fashion. This is just about my relationship to body and facial hair.

I’ve always had a unibrow. I’ve always had a visible ‘mustache’, that my mother used to bleach when I was a kid. And as I went through puberty I also grew a scattered crop of chin and neck hair.

Ever since I remember, rude people have always asked me questions about it. "Why do your eyebrows meet in the middle?“ is something I heard literally every day on the playground as a kid. Every. Single. Day. How do you even answer a question like that? It’s not like I control my genetics.

A lot of people believe that things like this are just an easy matter. If you’re bullied about it, have the hair removed. No big deal.

But it is a big deal, for me. It’s a huge deal.

And I’ve never, ever been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for why it’s such a big deal to me.

I used to practically fight my mom tooth and nail when she’d come at me with tweezers, promising that she only wanted to pluck the "stray hairs” around my unibrow, not the whole thing.

It felt like I was defending me. My self. Something deeply attached to who I was. Even though it was just a centimeter-long patch of fuzzy hair between my eyes. It really felt fundamentally like a battle that I had to take on.

I would be very upset, even today, if for some reason I was forced to pluck my unibrow.

It would feel like someone was taking something vital away from me.

I feel the same way about my other facial hair.

It’s not about gender. At least, I don’t think it is. Because I don’t really have a gender.

It is about identity, though.

I actually wish I could grow a full beard, or at least something more than this scraggly goatee I’ve got going on. But as long as I’ve got the scraggly goatee, I’m going to keep it. It’s mine. It’s important to me.

I have no explanation.

I have no explanation for why I have a unibrow, why I have dark fuzz over my lip, why I have a scraggly beard.

Doctors have tried to look into it and not really found anything conclusive. Every time I see a new gynecologist she freaks out about it, runs tests, finds nothing. I do have endocrine problems (severe adrenal insufficiency due to pituitary problems), but not with the specific hormones they keep expecting to find whenever they look at my facial hair.

So the facial hair has definitely been medicalized by doctors, but those same doctors can’t explain why it’s there, so I almost don’t care. Other than whatever it is, I wish there was more of it.

I get crap for having facial hair.

I get a lot of crap for having facial hair.

I’ve been in dangerous situations because I have facial hair.

I can’t make myself remove it.

I can’t.

I don’t know what I’d do if I actually had to remove it for some reason.

I can’t explain why it’s there – medically, I mean, I have no explanation for the physical reason it is there.

I can’t explain why it’s there – emotionally, I mean, I have no explanation for why I am so attached to it that the idea of removing it is almost physically painful.

All I know is that I have a unibrow, I have darkened hair on my upper lip, and I have scraggly chin hair, and that I love them, and that I am attached to them beyond all reason.

And that has to be enough.

I’d be curious if other people have such an intense attachment to things like this, because I’ve never been able to explain why this is something I have fought so hard to keep in spite of all the inconvenience and even danger that it’s put me in.

And it bothers me that people think if you’re bullied or harassed or worse over something like this, it’s okay because “it’s easy to change it, so you should change it”. First off, that’s not how the world should work. But second off, it’s not easy to change it. I don’t know why it’s not easy, but changing it would feel like betrayal of who I am at a very deep level.

And that’s the part I don’t understand – why is this so bound up in my identity? Why has it been so bound up in my identity from the time that I was a young child who would have at times given up everything else different about myself, things far more important, just to be normal and not be bullied… even then, I fought hard against anyone who said I should give this up? I mean, I would’ve many times, if I’d known what autism was, asked for my autism to be cured in a heartbeat, even though that’s far more fundamental to who I am. I used to beg the universe to make me someone else, anyone else. But even then, I would not change my facial hair, and I put up a fight for it at the mere suggestion that I should change it. And that seems bizarre to me.

I still feel the same way.

Also I think my unibrow and facial hair are among my favorite of my physical features. I really love the way they look. It’s not just that they’re tied into my identity, I also just feel like… most people have something they like about their appearance, and that is one of mine, I really honestly think it’s pretty, no matter what anyone else thinks.