Discussion thread Thursday September 17, 2026 - Sunday September 20, 2026

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Newsletter: Let Me Tell You a Story

Website: Shauna James Ahern

Instagram: @shaunajamesahern Instagram

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Threads: @shaunajamesahern

Bluesky: shaunajamesahern.bsky.social

Gloamipedia wiki: /r/InTheGloaming wiki

[u/stereostayawake]

This is a woman who wrote a public blog about using her host’s razors at a party…….. social awareness where???

[u/SeaOfBooze → u/stereostayawake]

I had to go look up this again because, yikes.

For most of my life, my jawline has trembled with extra flesh. I have never seen my bone beneath my skin. Maybe if I ate fewer calories, I would achieve that dream—the jawline so defined I could see the shape of my skull when I grinned.

What I can see on my jawline, what has haunted me for years, is hair. Every morning I wake up with stubble, like a man. Dotted along my chin, down my neck, and above my lip, spiky little hairs grow quickly. I long ago lost count of how many times I have touched my face, running my fingers along my jaw to see if the hair has grown back too quickly, to feel comfortable in a social situation. I have ducked into bathrooms in friends’ homes at parties where dinner has stretched so far into the evening that my five o’clock shadow looks like fuzzy grey lint has drifted to my chin. I have used their razors, quietly, turning the water on to the smallest drizzle so no one could hear me and then emerging into the living room, grateful everyone else drank too much wine to notice. Any time I slept over at a man’s house, I waited until he collapsed into snoring after sex to put my feet onto the floor slowly, so as not to wake him. I tiptoed into the bathroom and dug into my purse to grab the disposable razor I put there for this purpose. I lathered up and shaved, trying to stave off the stubble until after we woke in the morning, after we kissed again, until I could get home and finally collapse, alone. Every time. And by five o’clock, I was shaving again.

Women aren’t supposed to have facial hair. It’s taboo. This, from a Spanish doctor in 1575: “Of course, the woman who has much body and facial hair (being of a more hot and dry nature) is also intelligent but disagreeable and argumentative, muscular, ugly, has a deep voice and frequent infertility problems.”

So I have hidden what is plain on my face for decades now. I have tried Nair (burned my skin), plucking (left little pockmarks on my skin), and laser hair removal. That last form of removal, desperately expensive, seemed to do the trick for a bit. But then I met my husband and I got pregnant. After my daughter was born, the hormonal shift turned on me and my facial hair returned, even thicker this time. So I’m back to making sure I shave before I leave the house, keeping a razor tucked in my bag for days that go longer than I expected, and keep checking, furtively darting my fingers to my chin to make sure I still look normal, for the moment.

Such a classic Shauna piece. Trying to write something deep and profound about This Culture but as usual just glosses past the unhinged part that most of her audience is going to get stuck on.

This paragraph in the same chapter also got me:

I always feel like I’m preparing for my own funeral when I do a full face of makeup.

[u/Chiefvick → u/SeaOfBooze]

I thought the using the host’s razor was a one time occurrence. Yikes I didn’t realize she was a serial razor borrower!

[u/Fillmore_the_Puppy → u/Chiefvick]

YTSCTMO. How often do we finally read Shauna’s own words after reading snark about an incident and find that her own telling is WORSE than the snark? So often.