You’re a full-grown man.
A man with life experience. A man with wisdom. A man who’s comfortable in his own skin.
A man who has ear hair.
What? That’s right, when you start approaching forty years of age Mother Nature plays a little trick on you by liberating some of the hair on your head and freeing it to live on, or in, other parts of your body. One of those new locations is your ear.
Why does this happen? The same male hormone that causes male pattern baldness, DHT (Dihydrotestosterone), causes hair to increase growth in places like your nose, eyebrows, and you guessed it, your ear.
Excessive ear hair is just as distracting and frowned upon as having excessive nose hair or owning bushy brows. And like those afflictions, we don’t notice it until it’s too late.
First tip? Like I’ve mentioned in other “How To Men’s Grooming” pieces, dedicate a time each week to grooming. This will certainly reduce or eliminate embarrassing moments. Personally, I like Sunday night.
So, how do you get rid of unwanted ear hair? You can pluck, wax, or trim. Let’s look at each of these techniques.
Waxing
Waxing is very painful. It’s difficult to get to most of the ear hair and it leaves a less than desirable result.
Trimming
Trimming is better than waxing but it leaves a ‘cut hedge’ look. Trimming ear hair takes away the fine, natural taper of ear hair and gives the appearance of shorter, darker, and thicker hair in your ear.
Plucking
Our go-to choice is plucking. Now, before you say “not for me” I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is not painful and it’s just one of those things that sounds much worse than it really is. A major factor in pain-free plucking is the type of tweezers you use. You want to use rounded tip tweezers as opposed to normal slant nose tweezers so when you start feeling around for hairs, you are not being pinched or poked by the helpful grooming instrument itself.
How to Pluck Ear Hair
With the aid of a mirror and good lighting, start gently feeling around the entrance of your ear for hairs with the tips of the tweezers. When you locate one or more hairs with the tweezers tips (you can pluck more than one hair at a time), gently but firmly squeeze the tips together and pull the hair straight out. Clean the tweezers of the newly plucked hair and repeat as needed. That’s it! Simple, not painful, and very effective!
Alright, I’ll stop bending your ear now.