Christine Gurney, 54, from Milton Keynes, UK, has always been self-conscious about the thick hair that grows on her upper lip and chin.
Chrissy has either shaved every day, sometimes twice a day to avoid ‘5 o'clock shadow’, or had a painful wax once a week for the last 30 years.
She vowed to let her facial hair grow out for 'Movember' to raise awareness of men's mental health issues - and to break the stigma around women with facial hair.
Chrissy has either shaved every day, sometimes twice a day to avoid ‘5 o'clock shadow’, or had a painful wax once a week for the last 30 years.
She vowed to let her facial hair grow out for 'Movember' to raise awareness of men's mental health issues - and to break the stigma around women with facial hair.
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FunTranscript
00:00What I think people should know about facial hair and women is that it's not always a medical
00:10reason why women have got facial hair.
00:14Me personally, I've never been diagnosed with nothing.
00:18It started in my 20s when a friend of mine said, I'll shave it, it'll be fine.
00:24And it's just got worse and worse and worse.
00:27The majority of women do have a medical reason for having excess facial hair, but then not
00:34all women do have that reasoning and we're just left in limbo because we don't know why
00:42we've got excess facial hair.
00:44So I decided to do this Movember challenge in memory of my husband.
00:50We were halfway through a divorce and the day our decree in ISI went through, we were
00:58on the phone as usual, video talking, and yeah, it was the following morning that I
01:05was told that he had took his own life.
01:08So yeah, I'm doing this in memory of my husband.
01:18Has this challenge been difficult?
01:20Oh my God, where do I start?
01:23It is, I'd rather jump 15,000 feet out of an aeroplane.
01:28I've done that twice.
01:30This is just so much harder on so many different levels.
01:35You've got people staring at you and school kids sniggering at you and they don't realise
01:43that I'm trying to raise money for a good cause.
01:46I'm not sure why there's so much stigma around women having facial hair.
01:52It's been around for so long, since time begun, and women were put in the circus as freaks
02:01and I don't think society as a whole has ever got past that.
02:07So I think women having facial hair is still such a taboo subject and people look at you
02:14so much differently.
02:18That hurts so badly.
02:31I would give men advice, if they're struggling with their mental health, to literally talk.
02:41Pick up the phone, phone the Samaritans, social media.
02:45We've all got that one friend on social media that we've never met but we talk to every
02:51day as if they're our best friend in the whole world.
02:56It's a cliche when people say, I'd rather sit up all night talking than attend your funeral.
03:04Trust me, it's true.
03:07I'd rather sit up all night talking than have to attend somebody's funeral through suicide.
03:14And I think November does a great job and it's an all year round thing.
03:21It's just not for the month of November.
03:24So guys, please, it's okay not to be okay.