I don't shave, but cool topic anyways.

True or False:

If you shave, will the hair come back faster and thicker? I've always wondered if shaving would be a bad idea if your hair came back worse than before when you decided to stop.

the hair is all the same length, so it initally looks thicker while it is growing out. as the hairs grow out and fall out at different times (unsyncronized) it starts to return to normal.

so...yes AND no

False.

How would it know it's been shaved?

Do ingrown hairs make themselves obvious?

Sometimes painfully so!

Especially in this area.

Oh yeah, I shaved a couple of times, and decided it wasn't worth it. Now I just keep it nicely trimmed!

L8R

mmm, ropes, pillows and a mirror too?

Get yourself one of these, and if you want to trim additional areas (torso, arms) it works great. Any good beauty supply place should have them.
Yeah, maybe it ain't too manly, but when it's growing thick 'n scraggly (and losing its natural color) a
serious trim makes one feel real neat and clean.

This is sounding more and more like a bad porno. Call it "Shaving Ryan's Privates".

dealing with an ingrown hair issue as we speak, "clean" wasn't the way to go.

At least no one made this a "submit your pictures of..." thread

You bet! ...and she's very gentle at it too.

I haven't read this entire thread so forgive if I'm repeating...

Shaving with a razor can be the very cause of in grown hair. I learned this from an esthetician. I had been a razor user for shaving the face. For years I occasionally got pimples on my neck at the hair line. I asked her about it because as a teen I never had acne. She said "you're using a razor" and that's the cause of those sores. They're weren't pimples ...They were in grown hairs. She grabbed a pair of tweasers and augered in there (ouch!) and pulled out a hair!

You see, a razor can cause the hair to curl back against the skin just like curling the packing ribbon on a wrapped present with a knife.

So, don't shave it with a razor, Kiwi. Trim it with clippers, use an electric razor, wax it (ouch! too close to the short and curlies), or use nair (yuck!)

BTW, I have many friends from NZ that I've visited. Great white water rafting!

Yes, they wear very gawdy bike jerseys and matching shorts as if they were spancered by Colnago or some other chi-chi frame maker. I crack me up.

Seriously, you'll know. They're like pimples that don't pop. They stay around for as long as it takes your body to dissolve the hair. Kinda like bad friends who won't leave.

If you have a girl that is willing to wax that area for you, she may not actually like you.

Frankly, it seems like too much effort to go bald there. A nice trim doesn't hurt though.

ingrown anything just sounds like a whole lot of no fun.

well she wants to wax the legs for me...lots of girls are keen to do this it seems..even ones that I know are friends.

In the first instance of this thread, i was in fact referring to shaving not the wind catching danglies, but the area around...I would only ever think of TRIMMING and not shaving poor old Fred and friends.

Brendon

I cant imagine a guy shaving the whole area! I want a man to look like a man, not a boy. . .

AHem!

I recommend filling up an adult diaper (like Depends or "Oops, I Crapped My Pants") with nair and having a seat.

Its crevasse if you have a fat ass, or crevice if you have a flat one, by the by.

sorry, edited previous post

Possibly, but why does most body hair (all of it except for hair on your head, unless I'm forgetting something) grow to a certain length, then stop until you shave or cut it off?

I went to the hospital a few years ago to have a lung capacity test done. They had to shave part of my chest to attach the electrodes. The problem was, after the test was done, I had these four or five areas were shaved and the rest was the regular carpet. Sooooooo......I shaved my chest. I felt really weird not having the hair there after about 15 years of having it there. I also felt fat(er).
When it was growing back, I was miserable. It was like that episode of Seinfeld where he shaved his chest. Itchy like crazy! It also grew in thicker. I didn't think that was possible.

I now only shave from my eyeballs to my collar bones. I hate shaving, and will do as litle of it as possible. My wife calls me a walking carpet. And yet, the ultimate irony is that I'm going bald.

Nice.

As far as I can remember the answer to this is not that hair "knows when to stop growing" - it's just that it falls out after a certain amount of time. So head hair will keep on growing for a long time, while eyebrow hair grows for less time. Of course at any particular moment a particular patch of hair that has been left to grow (not clipped / trimmed) will have hairs of different lengths, but the overall impression is that the hair is an even length.