Growing body hair

I had years, over three decades, to get used to my female body, to make compromises with it, to put up with it, to try and love it or, at least, appreciate it — whether I liked it or not, with a mixture of positive and toxic messages from society. 

As I was washing my hands last night, hairs that appeared a little longer, a little darker, and a little thicker than usual on the outer side of the back of my hand, from below my pinky finger towards my wrist, caught my eye. And I honestly freaked out a little. 

So far, I’ve mostly enjoyed being on testosterone these past months and HRT has been very good for me: I’ve gotten even stronger and, especially, my relationship to food and body shape/image has gotten healthy, at last, after having been unhealthy for almost two decades. However, my feelings towards the increase of body hair with testosterone have always been mixed. 

I stopped plucking my eyebrows and shaving my legs & inguinal areas long before starting HRT: those were just spontaneous actions I took as I gradually started acting more and more authentically towards myself and caring less about society’s (& partners’) opinions, which I find to be extremely biased towards body hair on women. 

Since starting HRT, changes in my body hair have been the slowest and most recent. Other changes like my voice deepening, my body getting stronger and leaner, and my sex drive increasing even more, came sooner and almost immediately. Lately, however, the changes in my body hair have been getting more and more noticeable (at least to me): the little blonde mustache above my upper-lip has been thickening; a few little hairs are appearing on my chin, although they’re so sparse and, especially, so fair as to make them hardly visible; the hairs on my shins (which have been happily growing since I stopped shaving them over two years ago) have started getting longer and a little thicker; longer, darker hairs have been making their appearance around my groin and on my upper thighs, which are definitely completely different from the short, extremely sparse and very fair, almost invisible, hairs I’ve had on my thighs my entire life until recently. I’ve been noticing these changes and registering them. Accepting them, for the time being. Not necessarily liking them but taking them in a positive sense as proof of HRT working in the direction that I’ve chosen: to uncover the boy that I feel I am. And maybe also accepting them more easily because they’re visible only to myself but not to the outer world. 

But what about these few new hairs on the back of my hand and outside of my wrist? Are they really new, or am I imagining it? Either way, they’re visible — or they might be soon enough. Do I like them? Do I like myself with them? 

I know for sure that I don’t want to turn into a hairy man. I’m neither attracted to that type nor do I see myself as one. I don’t want a hairy chest nor a hairy back. I probably won’t take HRT that far, but anyway I know that electrolysis hair removal is a viable option and until now I’ve imagined having to think about and/or deal with extra body hair as something very remote in the future. 

But what about these little hairs on the back of my hands now? 

I don’t mind hairy forearms on men. I can still picture, in my mind’s eye, the golden hairs on the forearms of one big crush of mine: they were beautiful. But they were beautiful on those forearms, on his forearms, on the forearms of a 6-foot tall, strong and athletic young man with a matching beard — someone that I had never seen or known as anything else than a (handsome) cis-male. And, I must honestly admit, the hairs on his forearms were blonde, golden: had they been just as thick but dark, I might have not liked them. 

So what about myself? Can I see myself, like myself, with hairy hands and hairy forearms? And would I like it even if those hairs turned out to be darker than expected, darker than my ideal?