You were in the middle of a sentence. Something about Q3 projections, or the Henderson account, or whatever constitutes important at your particular job. Your hand moved to your chin. And there it was: wiry, deliberate, approximately three inches long, operating entirely without your knowledge or consent.

Here is the full story on why it showed up, why the shame response hit so hard, and what is actually worth doing about it.

Why this happens

As estrogen declines in perimenopause and menopause, the ratio of androgens (testosterone and its derivatives) to estrogen shifts. You do not necessarily have more androgens than you used to — but when estrogen drops, androgens become relatively more dominant.

Androgens stimulate hair follicles on the face and chin, and suppress them on the scalp. This is why chin hair and jawline hair tend to increase in midlife at the same time that scalp hair may thin. The biology is internally consistent; it is merely inconvenient.

Why the shame response is so disproportionate

The shame that hits when you find a chin hair in a meeting is wildly disproportionate to the actual significance of one chin hair. But it is not random.

Facial hair on women sits at the intersection of several loaded cultural narratives about femininity and belonging. We have been taught, explicitly and implicitly, that visible facial hair on women signals something wrong. So the discovery of a chin hair does not register as a minor grooming thing. It registers as a threat.

That response is worth naming for what it is: a conditioned reaction to an arbitrary cultural standard, not an accurate signal that anything is wrong with you.

What to do in the moment — in a meeting

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You were saying something important. Keep saying it.

The chin hair is not visible in the way you imagine it to be. People in meetings are not scanning your jawline. They are thinking about their own presentations and whether they should have eaten more for lunch. You have approximately a zero percent chance of being remembered for a chin hair and a much higher chance of being remembered for what you said.

What to do about it generally

Whatever you want. Options include tweezing, waxing or threading, laser hair removal or electrolysis (the most permanent solutions), or nothing at all — because one or several chin hairs do not require your management.

The only wrong answer is spending significant mental energy being ashamed of a normal hormonal response happening to a very large number of women your age.

The bigger point

Menopause and perimenopause produce a range of physical changes that are normal, common, and still treated as something shameful or unspeakable. Chin hair is one of them. The shame serves no one except the people selling you solutions to problems you shouldn’t have to feel bad about in the first place.

You were in a meeting being competent. That’s the story.

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