Time and time again, reading the personal stories of women who are growing out or have grown out their leg hair, they often comment about its softness (and, on the other side, women who shave but comment on the matter often say they remove their leg hair because they can't stand the prickliness that is their long leg hair). You hear words thrown around about long leg hair like "fluffy", "wispy, "like spiderwebs", and "like a rabbit's" (I assume that to mean "soft and velvety"). And, of course, on the other side, are slightly more negative vocabulary like "sandpaper", "pokey", and "like a porcupine" (hey, two animal comparisons, interesting!).
And now, a month or so into growing mine out, I have to admit that I'm getting a little tired of waiting for softness. The hairs themselves are quite long, so what's the hold-up? Or do some women just naturally have thick, coarse leg hair that will never not be prickly and bristly? I had nearly resigned myself to the idea that they would never be soft, until I started to do a little bit of research before taking blade to skin. What I learned:
The problem with growing out shaved hair- no matter where- is with the nature of the hair follicle. Let's take a look at a diagram of a hair follicle:
As you can see, the hair is not uniform in size all the way through; it is quite thick and broad at the base and gradually tapers off into a very thin, narrow tip. The conical shape of our hair follicles is actually the origin of the myth that shaving causes hair to grow back darker and thicker: when you shave your legs, you cut off the fine, thin tips, but what lingers underneath your skin is the much thicker base, which, when it finally surfaces, actually is thicker (comparatively) to what you shaved off. Of course, with the passage of time, your hair will continue to grow, and the new follicle will gradually push out that old one you've been shaving, and start afresh, this time head-first with that fine, thin tip. So while it might seem that your hair grows back thicker, it doesn't at all- you're just changing your perception of it by seeing different parts of it that you wouldn't normally see if you hadn't shaved.
And unfortunately, it is the same thing going on when you grow out your leg hair that has been shaven. The tips of the long hairs you're growing are probably still the thicker base that you previously exposed by shaving, leaving you with coarse, prickly-feeling hair. People who wax their legs experience the opposite- by ripping the hair out from the root, that means the new hairs that grow up are starting afresh, and that once they pass out of the short phase (where anything is going to feel stubbly, simply due to the length), they have the benefit of being instantly soft (this also leads people to believe that waxing makes your hair softer, which again, it doesn't, not any more than shaving makes it thicker).
With time, my old shaven stumps will fall out and my new leg hairs will sprout- and it can take anywhere from two to four months for this to happen, depending on your own personal hair growth cycle. I'll keep waiting for the day when I can touch eminently soft hair on my legs, when it feels less like the prickly side of velcro, and more like the soft side. I'm patient; in six months' time, I'll report back on if everything I've said here is true, or if some ladies really do just have coarse body hair.
And now, a month or so into growing mine out, I have to admit that I'm getting a little tired of waiting for softness. The hairs themselves are quite long, so what's the hold-up? Or do some women just naturally have thick, coarse leg hair that will never not be prickly and bristly? I had nearly resigned myself to the idea that they would never be soft, until I started to do a little bit of research before taking blade to skin. What I learned:
The problem with growing out shaved hair- no matter where- is with the nature of the hair follicle. Let's take a look at a diagram of a hair follicle:
As you can see, the hair is not uniform in size all the way through; it is quite thick and broad at the base and gradually tapers off into a very thin, narrow tip. The conical shape of our hair follicles is actually the origin of the myth that shaving causes hair to grow back darker and thicker: when you shave your legs, you cut off the fine, thin tips, but what lingers underneath your skin is the much thicker base, which, when it finally surfaces, actually is thicker (comparatively) to what you shaved off. Of course, with the passage of time, your hair will continue to grow, and the new follicle will gradually push out that old one you've been shaving, and start afresh, this time head-first with that fine, thin tip. So while it might seem that your hair grows back thicker, it doesn't at all- you're just changing your perception of it by seeing different parts of it that you wouldn't normally see if you hadn't shaved.
And unfortunately, it is the same thing going on when you grow out your leg hair that has been shaven. The tips of the long hairs you're growing are probably still the thicker base that you previously exposed by shaving, leaving you with coarse, prickly-feeling hair. People who wax their legs experience the opposite- by ripping the hair out from the root, that means the new hairs that grow up are starting afresh, and that once they pass out of the short phase (where anything is going to feel stubbly, simply due to the length), they have the benefit of being instantly soft (this also leads people to believe that waxing makes your hair softer, which again, it doesn't, not any more than shaving makes it thicker).
With time, my old shaven stumps will fall out and my new leg hairs will sprout- and it can take anywhere from two to four months for this to happen, depending on your own personal hair growth cycle. I'll keep waiting for the day when I can touch eminently soft hair on my legs, when it feels less like the prickly side of velcro, and more like the soft side. I'm patient; in six months' time, I'll report back on if everything I've said here is true, or if some ladies really do just have coarse body hair.
