Mark1966
Canberra dwelling Happy Clapping Bean Counter
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Site Moderator
Grand Society
2016 Sabbatical Fail
2018 Charity Auction Winner
2019 Charity Auction Winner
2020 Charity Auction Winner
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2011
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- Canberra
Female face shaving is more common than you think
(https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bu...k/news-story/82389df60ae496f87b167dcc80949435)
Brooklyn Horne, 23, started spending a lot more time online last year when the pandemic hit and she was confined to her home in Kansas City, Mo. She joined TikTok and began browsing skincare tutorial videos. One, by the influencer Jaclyn Hill on the topic of dermaplaning, or facial shaving, caught her eye.
Inspired, Ms. Horne ran right over to Walmart and bought a simple blade, then returned home to apply oil and shave all the baby hairs off her face. She began shaving regularly, and even posted her own video of it, captioned: “Normalise women with hairier faces.” (She recognises the irony of removing hair that she was seeking to normalise; her message, she said, was a call for more transparency around the topic.)
While many women routinely remove eyebrow, sideburn and upper-lip hair, the practice of shaving the entire female face has flourished recently. There’s certainly precedent: Woodblock prints from 16th-century Japan depict women shaving their faces with long, thin blades, and Queen Elizabeth I removed all forehead hair including eyebrows. Marilyn Monroe is rumoured to have shaved her entire face to smooth her skin. Today, some influencers, aestheticians and dermatologists are promoting the practice as a way to remove unwanted hair but also as an exfoliation technique — however drastic-seeming.
Dr. David Kim, a dermatologist at Union Square Dermatology in San Francisco, explained, “Dermaplaning is when you take a very gentle blunt scalpel and you scrape over the surface of your skin on the face or anywhere else on the body to gently exfoliate, to remove the thin hairs called vellus hairs and the outermost layer of the skin, which is where we have the dead skin cells and dirt and oil accumulation.” The goal, he said, is to achieve smoother, brighter skin and to equip your skin to absorb products more effectively. He said that it can work, especially for those who don’t already exfoliate with acids or use retinol. However, Dr. Kim does not recommend the practice for those with sensitive skin conditions like rosacea or eczema, or patients with acne, moles, psoriasis or active infections.
Dermaplaning
Dermaplaning is one of the main things Dr. Kim’s younger patients have asked about during the pandemic (along with butt and back acne, fungal infections in the groin, exfoliating acids and vitamin-C products). He chalks it up to dermaplaning’s popularity on social media, with its fun-to-view tutorials. “It’s very satisfying to see layers and layers of skin coming off of your face,” he said.
The dermaplaning videos, which proliferate on TikTok and YouTube, are indeed mesmerising. Women rub their faces with unctuous oil or cream before filming the blade running across their skin in hyper close-up. Tiny hairs accumulate and the women marvel at them, in a sort of updated version of the blackhead-filled Bioré pore strip advertisements of the 1990s. The success of these videos is not surprising in a social-media universe that prizes anything resembling ASMR — autonomous sensory meridian response. Other beauty-adjacent practices that fall into this category include hair brushing and the peeling off of face masks. And more gruesomely, pimple popping and back cracking.
While many practitioners of dermaplaning use the cheap razors you can find at any big-box store, specialised high-end appliances have entered the market. Sephora sells a dermaplaning tool from StackedSkincare for $75, as well as an “Anti-Aging Dermaplaning Exfoliation Device” from Dermaflash for $199. These are essentially razors, albeit ones supported by more advanced claims and marketing than the cheaper versions.
Beauty influencer Meagan Carboney, herself a devotee of facial shaving, launched the direct-to-consumer dermaplaning company Jill this year. For $24.99, you receive a “starter kit” that includes a device (which resembles a sleek vape pen) as well as two sizes of blades and a “Gunk Pad.” Since Ms. Carboney proselytises facial shaving as an ongoing habit, the company offers a subscription service with a “monthly shave plan.” Ms. Carboney is fully aware of the beauty trend’s link to social media, posting regularly to several platforms. One of Jill’s explanatory videos has over 21 million views on TikTok.
Five o’clock shadow myths
One of Jill’s mottos, echoing Ms. Horne’s video caption, is, “We are on a mission to normalise female facial shaving.” Ms. Carboney sees herself as a debunker of “myths,” such as the theory that facial hair will grow back thicker or faster post-dermaplaning. (Dr. Kim confirms that this is improbable, explaining, “You’re not damaging the hair follicles themselves. You’re just cutting the shaft of the hair.”) She also wants to counter what she calls “the stigma behind a woman shaving her face.” Dana Persia, a Philadelphia esthetician and a makeup artist who runs the bridal beauty company Beautiful Brides Philly, had similar misconceptions about dermaplaning before she tried it. “Men, they’ve always shaved their face, and it’s part of that ritual of being a man … I think that people think it’s weird [for women to] shave your whole face.” she said. Even so, some years back she watched incredulously as Caroline Manzo, one of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” shaved her entire face onscreen. When she started trying it on herself and her clients, she was pleased with the results. Ms. Persia, who is 54, said, “I feel like my skin looks more radiant. I do it for anti-ageing.” These days, it’s impossible to underestimate social media’s role in surfacing and disseminating new beauty trends, including dermaplaning. It’s a domino effect: One woman watches a tutorial, then she makes her own tutorial, inspiring others to follow suit. As Ms. Horne said, when she first discovered dermaplaning she thought, “I’m just going to try a video, see if it blows up. Maybe I’ll get TikTok famous.”
(https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bu...k/news-story/82389df60ae496f87b167dcc80949435)
Brooklyn Horne, 23, started spending a lot more time online last year when the pandemic hit and she was confined to her home in Kansas City, Mo. She joined TikTok and began browsing skincare tutorial videos. One, by the influencer Jaclyn Hill on the topic of dermaplaning, or facial shaving, caught her eye.
Inspired, Ms. Horne ran right over to Walmart and bought a simple blade, then returned home to apply oil and shave all the baby hairs off her face. She began shaving regularly, and even posted her own video of it, captioned: “Normalise women with hairier faces.” (She recognises the irony of removing hair that she was seeking to normalise; her message, she said, was a call for more transparency around the topic.)
While many women routinely remove eyebrow, sideburn and upper-lip hair, the practice of shaving the entire female face has flourished recently. There’s certainly precedent: Woodblock prints from 16th-century Japan depict women shaving their faces with long, thin blades, and Queen Elizabeth I removed all forehead hair including eyebrows. Marilyn Monroe is rumoured to have shaved her entire face to smooth her skin. Today, some influencers, aestheticians and dermatologists are promoting the practice as a way to remove unwanted hair but also as an exfoliation technique — however drastic-seeming.
Dr. David Kim, a dermatologist at Union Square Dermatology in San Francisco, explained, “Dermaplaning is when you take a very gentle blunt scalpel and you scrape over the surface of your skin on the face or anywhere else on the body to gently exfoliate, to remove the thin hairs called vellus hairs and the outermost layer of the skin, which is where we have the dead skin cells and dirt and oil accumulation.” The goal, he said, is to achieve smoother, brighter skin and to equip your skin to absorb products more effectively. He said that it can work, especially for those who don’t already exfoliate with acids or use retinol. However, Dr. Kim does not recommend the practice for those with sensitive skin conditions like rosacea or eczema, or patients with acne, moles, psoriasis or active infections.
Dermaplaning
Dermaplaning is one of the main things Dr. Kim’s younger patients have asked about during the pandemic (along with butt and back acne, fungal infections in the groin, exfoliating acids and vitamin-C products). He chalks it up to dermaplaning’s popularity on social media, with its fun-to-view tutorials. “It’s very satisfying to see layers and layers of skin coming off of your face,” he said.
The dermaplaning videos, which proliferate on TikTok and YouTube, are indeed mesmerising. Women rub their faces with unctuous oil or cream before filming the blade running across their skin in hyper close-up. Tiny hairs accumulate and the women marvel at them, in a sort of updated version of the blackhead-filled Bioré pore strip advertisements of the 1990s. The success of these videos is not surprising in a social-media universe that prizes anything resembling ASMR — autonomous sensory meridian response. Other beauty-adjacent practices that fall into this category include hair brushing and the peeling off of face masks. And more gruesomely, pimple popping and back cracking.
While many practitioners of dermaplaning use the cheap razors you can find at any big-box store, specialised high-end appliances have entered the market. Sephora sells a dermaplaning tool from StackedSkincare for $75, as well as an “Anti-Aging Dermaplaning Exfoliation Device” from Dermaflash for $199. These are essentially razors, albeit ones supported by more advanced claims and marketing than the cheaper versions.
Beauty influencer Meagan Carboney, herself a devotee of facial shaving, launched the direct-to-consumer dermaplaning company Jill this year. For $24.99, you receive a “starter kit” that includes a device (which resembles a sleek vape pen) as well as two sizes of blades and a “Gunk Pad.” Since Ms. Carboney proselytises facial shaving as an ongoing habit, the company offers a subscription service with a “monthly shave plan.” Ms. Carboney is fully aware of the beauty trend’s link to social media, posting regularly to several platforms. One of Jill’s explanatory videos has over 21 million views on TikTok.
Five o’clock shadow myths
One of Jill’s mottos, echoing Ms. Horne’s video caption, is, “We are on a mission to normalise female facial shaving.” Ms. Carboney sees herself as a debunker of “myths,” such as the theory that facial hair will grow back thicker or faster post-dermaplaning. (Dr. Kim confirms that this is improbable, explaining, “You’re not damaging the hair follicles themselves. You’re just cutting the shaft of the hair.”) She also wants to counter what she calls “the stigma behind a woman shaving her face.” Dana Persia, a Philadelphia esthetician and a makeup artist who runs the bridal beauty company Beautiful Brides Philly, had similar misconceptions about dermaplaning before she tried it. “Men, they’ve always shaved their face, and it’s part of that ritual of being a man … I think that people think it’s weird [for women to] shave your whole face.” she said. Even so, some years back she watched incredulously as Caroline Manzo, one of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” shaved her entire face onscreen. When she started trying it on herself and her clients, she was pleased with the results. Ms. Persia, who is 54, said, “I feel like my skin looks more radiant. I do it for anti-ageing.” These days, it’s impossible to underestimate social media’s role in surfacing and disseminating new beauty trends, including dermaplaning. It’s a domino effect: One woman watches a tutorial, then she makes her own tutorial, inspiring others to follow suit. As Ms. Horne said, when she first discovered dermaplaning she thought, “I’m just going to try a video, see if it blows up. Maybe I’ll get TikTok famous.”
