Blanca Alfani

So today I’m gonna write about, you guessed it, PEANUTS! Okay, okay, no. Skincare, of course. Am I a professional esthetician or a dermatologist? Well, no. Have I taken specialized courses? Also no. Am I qualified in any way, shape, or form to give advice on this subject? Well, again, no. Wow, that’s three negatives right out of the gate. But writing about skincare is exactly what I’m going to do anyway. Why? Well, why not? Skincare was something I grew up watching every single girl do. It had this undeniable charm, something about all those different serums and lotions for a million different things that I didn't understand, but I was definitely drawn to. Unfortunately, for most of my life, it was completely out of reach. Men didn’t do skincare decades ago, at least not as far as I knew. And if you did, well, we all know the kind of social consequences you'd face. Fortunately, times have changed, and it’s becoming way more common now, especially among the younger generations. ...

No, this post isn’t about James Cameron’s movie. Funny enough, that’s one film I really don’t like. I saw it once, and that was already one time too many. Naturally, I haven't seen any of the sequels either, I honestly have no idea how many of them are out there at this point. Instead, I’m talking about a different kind of avatar. I belong to the generation that grew up with MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and AIM, back before "social media" was even a thing. It was a revolutionary time. No longer did you have to write an email and wait days for a response (though email itself had already almost completely replaced regular mail). No longer did you have to make expensive, long distance phone calls. All you needed was a messenger app, and you could be up for hours chatting with friends, family, or random people across the globe. Then came Facebook in 2004, which initially required a college email address and only let you network with students from your own university. ...

Some time ago in an article by my friend Hannah ( Your Unhinged Comments ) she mentioned something that set the hamster wheel in my brain spinning:  “Tell me one country where being straight is illegal. Yep. Zero.” Let me clarify that while her post was making a     serious point about systemic privilege, my mind took that sentence and ran down a more speculative rabbit hole. If straight, cisgender people have never had to fear their identity being outlawed, it is because they have always built the towns, wrote the laws, and established the norms. So what did my mind came up with: What if we built our own? What if we created an intentional "Free State" or a "Woke Town," just to make some people and the critics twitch? I know there are already a lot of diverse neighborhoods and LGBTQ+ friendly enclaves in some cities and countries. Every once in a while I find myself searching for the safest, most Trans welcoming countries, states or cities, dreaming of a life where ...

Okay, let’s continue right where we left off last time, without any delay! At the beginning of my laser treatment, I thought, Wow, I might even be done by my fifth session or earlier! Unfortunately, after that initial, exciting progress, things seemed to hit a standstill and started moving a lot slower, or at least, that’s how it felt. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of hair stops growing back completely, but there are always those stubborn ones that you keep seeing session after session. They might start getting thinner and taking longer to regrow, but they’re definitely still there. By the time I was in my eighth or ninth session, I was really starting to worry. Why was this remaining hair refusing to be eliminated forever? That initial excitement started transforming into disappointment. I was eight months into the process, I never thought it would take that long, and I still had at least four months left of my original contemplated timeline. The clinic we chose has a written warranty gua...

Well, this is a continuation of my previous post, “Body Hair.” In that article, I mentioned my early hair removal experiences up to the point where my lovely wife paid for a laser treatment for me. How amazing is that, considering not even she has done it for herself? Could it be she was using me as a guinea pig, though? Lol! Now, I apologize in advance, but I’m afraid I’ll also have to split this post in half. Well, let’s dive in. I was already getting used to my epilator. If you have a fair amount of pain tolerance, it’s a practical little machine that I’d highly recommend. Still, my wife could not bear looking at my red, swollen legs, even though that only lasted around 20 to 30 minutes after each session and that’s exactly why she did what she did. So, I’ll go straight to the point, Is laser hair removal the definitive, wonderful, painless solution? In my personal experience, sadly, no.  I never actually researched it beforehand because it wasn't something that crossed my mind ...