Last updated on August 19, 2020
Question:
How can I be really hairy one day after shaving? My friends say I have to shave again. But your calculator says I’m at stage 4.6.
Answer:
How often a man needs to shave, or perhaps we should say desires to shave, depends on a number of factors. Most men shave to give their face a smooth look. It is during stage four that your facial hairs change from the small fine hairs which are almost transparent to the thicker and darker hairs.
A person from some lineages, such as many Asian nationalities, generally don’t get a lot of thick hairs on their face. The few that they get are scattered and don’t grow rapidly. But people from other lineages, such as many European nations, generally have a lot of their facial hairs change to the thick kind and they can grow rapidly.
In the middle of stage four, your facial hairs might still be converting over to the thicker hairs, but those that already have changed will be coming in with a dark color that stands out against your skin color. You probably also are the type that grows hair quickly.
I’ve known men who manage to shave once every three or four days. But I’ve also known men who shave in the morning and look like they need another shave in the evening (which gives rise to the phrase “five o’clock shadow”).
Question:
Thanks! I am Okinawan and they are the hairy Asians. I had to start shaving my face when I was in fifth grade. How come?
Answer:
Each person develops at their own pace. If you happened to reach puberty early, then later events, such as the development of facial hair will also tend to come earlier as well. This is why I try to avoid talking about ages except in terms of averages. It is more accurate to talk about what stage of development you are currently in.
In addition, while the order of development is common between individual boys, it is not fixed. Some people develop in a slightly different order. For instance, typically body hair is one of the last things to show up for most boys, but I recall one boy whose first sign of puberty was hair developing on his back. So while we can talk about what generally happens and in which order it generally happens, for any one person it can be different. It might have been that your facial hair developed earlier in adolescence than most boys.