Mara Altman - Gross Anatomy

Even right now.

Yep, still embarrassing.

But not only was I embarrassed; I also felt ashamed. I was back to being that kid poised with the lint remover over my leg—feeling equal shame for having hair as for getting rid of it. Why couldn’t I just be okay with who I was? Why was I spending so much money and time hiding myself?

But if you thought I’d stop it with the laser after realizing all that, then you haven’t been reading this very closely.

Two years later, in the middle of my second laser treatment back in New York, I began to consider the possibility of a medical problem. I felt like I was fighting a rare battle—but I wasn’t sure because, theoretically, if other women were like me, it would be a battle fought alone and behind closed doors. If other women were waging it, I wouldn’t know. But then again, could any of them have so many wanton whiskers? This couldn’t be what was supposed to be happening to a woman’s body.

So I went to my gyno for a follicular assessment and possible intervention.

Unfortunately, she had some bad news for me: I was normal. She explained that there are three common reasons for unusual quantities of hair on women. They either have polycystic ovaries or hormone imbalances, or they were simply born with hairy genes. “Many Eastern Europeans have a lot of dark, thick hair,” Dr. Chrisomalis said. I could have sworn that she was examining my chin as she spoke.

A waxer once told me that she knows what she’s about to deal with before people even take off their pants because the eyebrows reveal everything. Why couldn’t my doc just check out my eyes, then?

“But it’s got to be something else,” I pleaded. I’d recently contemplated the possibility that I’d hit early menopause—there had been some hot flashes, I’m pretty sure—and I’d never given up that early idea that I might be part man. I speculated now that my nuts just hadn’t descended yet. “I’ve got hair even on my …”

But I couldn’t tell a medical professional about the nipple hair. And what would be the point, anyway? I’d plucked that morning especially for her.

“I don’t think you have PCOS,” she said. “Other symptoms are weight gain and acne, but if it’d make you feel better, we can do some tests and maybe some blood work on your hormone levels.”

She extracted some of my blood and scheduled me for an ultrasound. That actually got me a tiny bit excited. It would be awesome if something was medically wrong. I’d be officially diagnosed and on my way to a cure. I could stop going crazy.

But the ultrasound revealed nothing wrong with my ovaries. No cysts. There weren’t even any hidden male gonads. When my gyno got back to me about the blood tests, she said that all my hormone levels were normal.

“Normal? Are you sure?”

“Totally normal.”

So my doctor was telling me it’s normal to be a hairy beast. I was relieved, terrified, and lost.

I couldn’t quit the laser. I continued treatments at a place called American Laser, on Broadway near Twenty-second Street in Manhattan. In the waiting room, they had magazines like People and OK! in a pile. I think they put them there for a reason; they wanted me to look at Kim Kardashian’s poreless and follicle-free face and get turned on about having my body blasted with a machine I didn’t understand in the slightest.

I dislike those magazines and think of them as vapid and a waste of time, but that’s only because I can get sucked into them for hours and I always end up feeling guilty about my desire to know how many hours a day Angelina leaves her kids with the nanny, instead of using my time to start understanding the crumbling economy.

So I’d get into the laser-treatment room, conjure the hair-free cover girl, and tell the laser lady to put the damn thing on the highest they could without causing my face permanent damage.

“It’s going to hurt,” she’d say.

“I don’t care,” I’d say.

“Tell me if it’s too high.”

“It’s not high enough!”

Hair brought out a little bit of psycho in me. I never acted like that anywhere else, except for maybe when I’m baking. (I get really bossy when I’m baking.)

The American Laser office was in the same building as a casting agency. Sometimes on the elevator ride up, I’d pretend to mouth some scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire and reapply ChapStick in the mirror so that no one would suspect that I was actually lasering.

No, silly, I’m not hairy. I’m an actress.

I also kept it from the guy, Dave, whom I’d started dating in 2008. I would throw away the laser appointment cards so that he couldn’t find them and instead use code—“lunch with Leslie” or just an exclamation point—when I wrote down the appointment in my calendar.

When I moved in with him in 2010, a whole new challenge emerged. Close quarters put my secret in jeopardy. I carried out my depilatory duties like they were a covert Navy SEAL operation. I had extra razors and tweezers in my gym bag and purse and hidden in bathroom corners. Mixed martial arts fights were my saving grace. Dave would be attached to the couch for hours at a time, watching hairless men grapple each other, while my stainless-steel Tweezerman and I got it on in the bathroom. If Dave asked what I was doing in there for so long, I’d tell him I was picking at pimples or that the milk in my coffee was working its way through my intestines. That usually shut him up.

The point is, I’d rather have Dave think I was shitting than plucking. His knowing that I was so hairy would have rendered me faulty, almost broken—like he’d driven off with a lemon from the used-car showroom. But I also yearned for him to know and accept me as I was. I realize it doesn’t help our relationship that the only thing I can think about when we cuddle is how to position myself to keep him from seeing any stray hair that might break free. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t even be writing this if we weren’t already engaged. Publicly divulging my hairiness during my dating years would have ruined my ratings on Jdate and Match.com.

You can’t sell a car by pointing out the jagged, deep dent on the driver’s side.

I hate that I feel that way, but there it is.

And as long as I’m talking about things I hate—this is a little off the point, but you know what always kills me? It kills me when girls compliment my eyebrows, because in the aughts, eyebrows with girth came back into fashion. “Wow, they’re so nice and thick. I wish I had those,” friends would say. The compliments are always by women who are fair-skinned and light-haired. I’ve never had a thick-browed lady say one thing about my eyebrows. You know why? Because they know the behind-the-scenes story. If any of those light-haired ladies knew what those two caterpillar-shaped suckers actually meant, they’d back away from the situation with their hands up.

Anyway, I kept up the laser treatments for three years.

After my last appointment, I asked to speak to the office manager.

“It didn’t work,” I said.

I wanted my chin as hairless as a piece of polished granite or my money back. Even though I knew the truth—that laser can be very good for dark hair (pubic, armpit, man beard), as it targets the melanin in the follicle—it has a much harder time getting rid of fine and lighter hair like the gang of strays I had on my face.

“Well, the face is a very stubborn place,” the office manager said. “We always tell all our clients that. If you want, we can sign you up for another treatment.”

“Why should I sign up for another treatment when it didn’t work after three years?”

“The face is a very stubborn place,” she reiterated.

“If it’s stubborn, why should I do more laser?”