hair growth direction issue

[ew]

Hello.

The hair on the right side of my face grows pointing back towards the bottom of my ear in a diagonal direction. On the right side of my neck it grows almost horizontally back towards the back of my neck. This looks very good. It looks like most normal facial hair.

But on the left side of my face and neck it's totally different. The hair grows pretty much vertically down in places and there is no nice consistent pattern like on my right side.

I don't know how this happened but it's looks awful and makes me feel stupid.
Does anyone here know of any shaving technique or any method that will make the hair on my left side grow in a symmetrical direction to the hair on my right side?

Thanks very much.

[Baloosh]

Unless you can re-align the hair follicles on the one side of your face... at the below-skin level... I'm afraid not.

Dr. Moss will probably chime in with his big words like "sub-epidermal" and how the hair we actually "see" is a very small fraction of the actual hair shaft itself... and your hair follicles aren't very dynamic in how they can change orientation. But he's always got great explanations like that.

[notthesharpest]

No.

This is just the way you are. Blame your parents and grandparents. There is nothing you did to cause it, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

If you shave, you have to try to match the strange pattern as much as possible - this will make your shave much more comfortable.

If the hair pattern embarrasses you, then don't keep a short beard. Either go clean shaven or wear a long beard.


If the natural pattern of your hair doesn't embarrass you, then go ahead with having short beards or whatever else you like.

Many, many men have this same thing. I am one of them, and I don't care. (But I never wanted to wear a beard anyway.)

[brothers]

In order to understand what directions to shave, wtg, xtg, and atg, it works to draw a diagram or map of your face with little arrows pointing to the direction of the beard growth. Once that's done, you can formulate a plan to shave wtg, xtg, and atg that fits your individual face. Everybody's direction of beard growth is different, the videos just use the mythical standard as an example to follow, not to be followed literally, as in N - S, and E - W, etc.

[JayTrek]

Agree with all of the posts above.

I have a similar problem in that on the right side of my face, I have a curly-Q at the point of my jaw on the right side just under the ear. So my ATG pass requires that I do a circle there. That being said...once you get used to doing it and find what works for you, it is really not much of an issue.

But as brothers stated above a diagram is good as you are starting to help you figure out your directional technique.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Squire]

ew, it grows at it grows and we adjust according.

[ichabod]

I'd guess that very few men have "normal" beard growth patterns all over their faces.

I also have the impression (completely unscientific) that many of us who end up paying more attention to shaving and doing it well are motivated by a feeling that our facial hair is unsightly in some way. That way might be many things - a sparse beard, an uneven beard, one with multiple grain directions, a heavy beard, a light beard.

I'd also suggest that the best way for you to deal with it is, as NTS said, either keep yourself nicely clean shaven or grow a beard long enough to negate the pull of the follicle direction.

(I'd also suggest that the number of people who have ever met you and thought of you as "that guy with the weird hair growth directions on his beard" is very low, if not zero.)