Beard Talk. Also...insurance...VERY bad combo, IIUC?? (Bonus points re: Ohio Medicaid)

[Heather Nicole]

Ok, so ever since even before my egg cracked, part of my standard "guy disguise" has been a Will Riker-style well-groomed beard (or Nick Stellino if you prefer good PBS cooking shows.) Or, rather, it becomes reasonably-groomed whenever my chronic ADD actually gets around to trimming the parts I do keep and shaving the parts I don't. Don't even ask how many years it took my naive closeted transfem-ass to figure out I even could trim and groom a beard! There were casual mentions of "Grizzly Adams"...and...uhmmm..."unibomber"...which, at the time...my fully uncracked egg thought was...funny...(ungghhh...!)

 

But that was years ago now...and lately I've been playing with making the "keep" parts of the "pretend to be a guy"-beard shorter and shorter.

 

I've seen plenty of transgal advice about starting facial hair removal as early as possible, but I've been (respectfully) passing on that advice because...well, in guy-mode, (still most of my out-of-the-house time right now), when I've seen myself clean-shaven I've been like "Oh dear god, is that what my face looks like?!" (I maintain that facial hair is NOT "male cleavage" as my brother once suggested, but is instead "cishet-guy makeup". It can do a lot for concealing and contouring!!! Both of which I'm still terrible at doing via actual makeup (again, chronic ADD...very much NOT helping here!)

 

But ok, so, I don't know why I never thought of this before, but it literally only occurred to me just now...It should be entirely possible to get started on facial hair removal, even like, months ago...on the parts of my "male disguise" beard that I already try to keep shaved anyway! So like, the neckbeard part and the upper-to-mid cheek areas. Duuuuh!!!

 

So, now that I've just slightly de-stupided myself finally, the painfully obvious question I'm now faced with is...

 

Can (US) insurance EVER do anything to help with facial hair reduction? In case it matters, the insurance involved is Ohio Medicaid, which...while certainly not magical or anything, has proven to be...rather embarrassingly good so far...(though I wouldn't want to tempt fate)...