Gillette Venus Extra Smooth Sensitive is the best dermaplaning tool
Some of the things that my mother didn’t warn me about turning 50:
• Thinning lips
• Increased chance of UTIs (This one strikes me as extraordinarily cruel)
• Overnight, weed-like growth of facial hair
And I don’t mean chin hairs, like the stealthy ones that you don’t see until they're an inch long and beginning to curl. So you marvel at their length, tweeze them and wonder if you’re slowly becoming a werewolf.
No. I’m talking about the all-over “peach fuzz” that can appear when menopause hits and your estrogen levels fall while androgens (primarily testosterone) rise. This ‘vellus hair’ (unlike the thicker ‘terminal’ hair of whiskers, brows, lashes and the hair on your head) may appear in a “male pattern distribution” that starts as pale, downy sideburns and soon threatens to colonize your entire face. Get enough of it and you start looking like a Muppet when the light hits it just right.
Sure, in “the before times”, you could go to a med spa for dermaplaning, where a nice woman in a white coat would go at your face with a sharp, single blade, removing that top layer of dead skin to stimulate cell turnover and enhance the penetration of your anti-aging skincare products. And as a bonus it would take all that peach fuzz along with it.
But because I am horribly lazy (and possibly cheap?) while also being high maintenance, I like to DIY and shave the fuzz off myself with a proper razor.
I don’t trust dedicated, lady face-shaving devices (usually pink) or single-use blades with flimsy plastic handles that come in multi-packs. I want a sharp, safe razor built by the obsessives at Procter & Gamble who spend their days worrying about blade-on-skin friction ratios, say things like “we do more welding than most car manufacturers” and get excited by the fact that “the radius of the blade’s tip is 25 nanometers.” (That’s one millimetre divided by 40,000, in case you didn’t know.)
The Venus Extra Smooth Sensitive razor ($15, drugstores) is perfect for any face-shaving newbie, and with five ‘low cutting force’ blades and a lubricant strip, designed to minimize irritation, it’s already meant for sensitive skin.
Please note that this is an off-label use, that is NOT RECOMMENDED BY THE BRAND. They would say that their Gillette blades for men are designed for faces while the women’s are meant for the straight-away real estate that is your underarms and legs.
But unlike men who have to go under the chin and down their tender (so very tender) necks and all over uneven terrain (a skill that takes years to master), female vellus hair really just grows in that afore-mentioned sideburn pattern, so you will only be shaving flat areas anyways.
Which I do. I make a point of shaving the fuzzy outer portion of my face in the shower whenever I change blade cartridges. That way I'm using the sharpest blades possible, which means an easier and closer shave. And don't worry about the hair growing back thicker if you shave it off. Hair is dead when you cut it, so that’s a myth. It might feel spikier because you razored the ends which makes them pointier. That’s it.
And do remember that peach fuzz and dead skin cell removal will leave your skin receptive to the brightening properties of Vitamin C. (I always encourage the use of vitamin C.)
So shave, and then apply some vitamin C serum and consider that a morning well spent.