#if youre nervous about shaving in general start with an electric razor. they are super simple to use

[elftwink]

my pro tip if you're on T and starting to grow facial hair and you were at first really excited but as it grew in you start to feel like something nebulously "looks bad" in your appearance: you should try styling or shaving your beard. not like shave it off but square it up and make some clean lines. obviously you don't NEED to do this and plenty of cis men do not and it really doesn't impact your appearance that much— but this is about how you feel about how you look. and especially if you learned to shave on your own i think you sometimes miss out on/are slower learning some of the smaller things like the different ways you can shave or about how long you feel comfortable going between shaves (and how long other people are typically going between them) or in what ways caring for facial hair is the same/different from caring for head hair or what kind of razor you like/is best for the shave you want or anything of the like.

you probably have a sense of about when you want to shave. the problem is that if you aren't used to shaving, instead of thinking "man i need to shave" you think "man i look like shit" & one of these things is actionable and the other is just going to make you feel like shit. and you only discover that it was the shave when (or IF) you finally do shave & the fog lifts and youre like ohhhhh i wasnt fundamentally unlovable and ugly i just disliked this minor thing about my appearance and did not have the experience yet to detect my dislike was about this specific thing.

one thing about living with dysphoria for many years is you can end up alienated from your body and develop avoidance behaviours about even considering how you feel about how you look, because it is so painful. these behaviours will persist even if the dysphoria itself starts to lessen or subside in the course of transitioning (thinking "i hate myself and if i think about my body for longer than 10 seconds i'll throw up" every single day for many years will have an impact on you even after you have started changing all the physical things that made you feel that way), and it will take a lot of time to work through this and slow your brain down enough to try to identify what is actually bothering you before jumping to immediate shutdown of thinking about your body. also you probably have regular insecurities about how you look that previously were completely overshadowed by the all-encompassing dysphoria hell. it can sometimes feel like you're doing something wrong if you don't love everything about your body all the time after you start pursuing transition, but that feeling is a lie. you are a human being, and nobody loves everything about how they look all the time.

hormones are a boost to getting you to be the person you want to be, but they won't get you to the finish line. for that you gotta do the same thing as everyone else: really think about your body and how you want to look, and try a bunch of stuff out if you're not sure. a decent shave is one of those things that is often overlooked but can dramatically change how you look and feel. learn from my life lessons & try a shave before you spiral. okay love you goodnight sleep tight dont let the bedbugs bite