i decided to transition into this career path as it was a way to materially impact the lives of fellow trans people and erase boundaries that they face. It sounds dramatic, but I think of myself as less of an aesthetician and more of someone who helps improve mental health and makes you harder to discriminate against in daily life.

I am not one to impose traditional norms of femininity on anyone, but the world we live in is how it is.

I operate with a severe sliding scale payment model, which slides upwards to the extent that wealthier clients are able to pay it forward to fund free sessions for folks with less means, and downwards to the extent that it costs me money to work on someone (that is okay and everyone deserves this kind of service if they want it)

In addition to my own little practice I'm also working at another clinic which is also trans focused, and does a lot of work for folks who are prepping for lower surgeries as well as general gender affirming hair removal. This also means I work with a lot of trans dudes who are prepping for their lower surgeries, so it's not only trans fem folks

Ask me anything about hair removal

edit: Have a question in the future and this post is really old? Feel free to reply or DM me - I've been posting here for years and it's unlikely to stop until i'm a corpse

  • jwsmrz [comrade/them]
    ·
    5 months ago

    Depends drastically on the person. I'll note that I focus primarily on electrolysis because I like the precision and the fact that it has the same success rate for every type of hair / skin.

    Nothing happens overnight, and anyone who promises a quick fix is lying to you to get your money or is simply uninformed.

    We're at the mercy of hair growth cycles; the hair you see growing on someone's body at the current moment could be only 1/5 - 1/4 of the potentially active follicles. Each follicle goes through a lifecycle of growth and shedding, but these lifespans overlap. To see every active follicle on someone's target area will take up to a year or more.

    The larger clinic I work at divides the face into vertical strips about 1.5" wide, and we clear one of those strips per session (~2-4h) and then loop back to treat the regrowth and follicle we ignored on the previously treated areas. re: ignored follicles, a caveat is that we take care to not treat too many follicles close to one another, since the density of follicles creates a risk of overtreatment (skin damage, pitting, various other bad scenarios) if we just go full hog and zap every follicle at once.

    This can often be frustrating for the client since its not linear, but results in a better treatment in the long term. Sometimes for folks who experience a lot of dysphoria with their upper lip and "goatee" area hair we will prioritize that, but again it's not the most efficient long term solution for complete removal.

    By the time we reach the other end of the face that we started on, the first area is usually pretty well taken care of with only the occasional stray stubborn hairs remaining. Then we proceed back across.

    I'm still newer to the field so my speed isn't as great as some, but for someone who is faster, in the case of an extremely dense follicle pattern, could be upwards of 80 hours when all is said and done, possibly more for an extreme case. As you do more sessions the amount of time it takes for clearances and the amount of time between sessions will drastically reduce. So yeah, this is a 12-18 month journey.

    If I had to recommend a SPEED CLEAR ASAP route, for a candidate with pale skin and dark hair it would probably be a lot more efficient to start with laser and then bring in electrolysis for the stubborn hairs. Unfortunately for friends with more melanin in their skin the efficacy of laser is reduced a lot.

    So yeah I don't have good news.

      • EllenKelly [comrade/them]
        ·
        5 months ago

        i've had six sessions of laser on my face and chest and a lot of hair is seemingly gone for good, unless you pay attention to it being a bit patchy you can't really tell i've had any treatment

        my skin is very fair, but my bodyhair is lightbrown to blonde so it could have been more effective, six sessions cost me about $700 (a pass over my face and chest each session)

        I was also supressing my T at the time so I had less active hair follicles generally (to my understanding)

        i'm not the op but this was my experience, I wouldn't get more laser in a hurry due to the expense.

        it was fun watching hairs fall while I had it done at least

      • jwsmrz [comrade/them]
        ·
        5 months ago

        No form of hair removal is "one and done forever" and I cant stress that enough

        The pace of electrolysis is slower, but has a vastly higher follicle kill rate compared to laser. So it might be more efficient in the long run, but thats on a case by case basis.

        Some folks might find that having a lot of laser sessions accomplishes virtually nothing, some folks will find that it gets them to the goal line. Every body is different