The method of getting a gender-affirming facial hair tattoo is finally much like that of some other beauty tattoo: It requires a big quantity of communication and collaboration between the shopper and artist, beginning with an in-depth session in regards to the desired look, what’s potential given how a lot (if any) pure facial hair or different beauty tattoos a shopper already has, aftercare, and all the opposite sensible parts of beauty tattooing. However there’s an extra emotional aspect to consulting a few gender-affirming facial hair tattoo as a result of gender identities are distinctive from individual to individual, and solely the shopper can decide how their gender could be finest mirrored by their tattoo.
As soon as that preliminary session is full, Reeve applies a topical lidocaine cream to the shopper’s tattoo location for numbing, maps out a border for the tattoo with additional enter from the shopper, after which begins tattooing as soon as they and the shopper are in settlement in regards to the tattoo’s form, dimension, and symmetry.
The methods and instruments Reeve makes use of are finally the place facial hair tattooing differs from different types of beauty tattooing. Whereas microblading, for example, is finished with a specialised bladed device that permits a technician to attract on hair-like strokes by slicing into the pores and skin, Reeve makes use of a rotary tattoo machine with a needle cartridge that punctures the pores and skin, which they are saying is lighter and quieter than coil machines which are typically used for physique tattooing. This method creates small dots that seem like single hairs which are simply beginning to develop previous the floor of the pores and skin, creating the phantasm of “5 o’clock shadow relatively than full hair strokes such as you would see in an eyebrow.”
This contributes not solely to the realism of Reeve’s facial hair tattoos but additionally to how effectively they age. Based on them, the hair-like traces which are reduce into the pores and skin with microblading can increase over time, which means the pigment can bleed outward and create one stable form relatively than particular person traces (as somebody who has their very own poorly-aged microblading, I can personally attest to this). That’s why beard microblading would possibly work for somebody who’s attempting to fill in sparse patches between in any other case full facial hair however not somebody who has sparse or no pure facial hair in any respect; it might wind up trying like a Lego block of beard relatively than reasonable hair.
Though this process known as a “tattoo,” it doesn’t use conventional tattoo ink, which is everlasting and, as Reeve factors out, can change in tone over time and might react with pores and skin’s undertones. As a substitute, they use pigments which are particular to beauty tattooing, which aren’t completely everlasting. “A facial hair tattoo will fade sooner than a standard physique tattoo and would require touch-up appointments extra steadily,” Reeve explains. “That timeline actually varies from individual to individual.” To account for this, Reeve often recommends that new shoppers e-book two tattooing periods which are not less than eight weeks aside; the second session gives the chance to construct density the place it’s wanted post-healing and make some other desired changes.
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