Body Hair Removal

Body Hair Removal: What Works and What Doesn't

Choosing a body hair removal method is almost as dangerous as playing Russian Roulette. Though your life isn't at stake, your comfort and physical well-being are. And virtually every hair removal product swears that it's painless, easy, and successful. They shamelessly toy with our desire for hairless skin, without any care or sensitivity to our actual experience while using their product.

I feel very strongly about this because I have excessive hair growth on many parts of my body, and for a woman, this is a real issue for me. Growing up, I refused to wear tank tops or shorts or a bathing suit. Anything that showed my underarms or legs embarrassed me as my coarse, dark hair always showed on my pale skin, even right after I shaved.

So when a new body hair removal product promises me that it'll work, and it goes through the trouble to gain my trust, I take it as a personal insult when it not only doesn't work, but physically hurts. This has been my experience with virtually every hair removal product out there.

The first product I tried was a depilatory cream. I figured even if it didn't work, it couldn't be that bad. Well compared to some other fiascos, the experience was mild, however now I realize that if a product's chemical makeup is designed to actually dissolve hair in the follicle, then those strong, toxic chemicals can't be healthy for my skin, which it inevitably soaks into.

The depilatories weren't strong enough to dissolve my coarse hair, and what's worse, they severely dried out my sensitive skin till it scaled and became sore to the touch. The sites I tested the lotion on stung mildly for a couple days.

So next, I tried a waxing kit. Believe me, I knew before I tried it that this was probably going to be a bad idea. But I was determined to find a relief for my hair anxiety. I'm sorry to say that I couldn't even get the waxing kit to work. All I got was underarms covered with wax that wouldn't come off with the strips provided. I had to use extremely hot water to melt it off, which was so hot I could barely handle it on my skin. My underarms were left swollen and I could not shave or touch them for a week. I had to cry from frustration.

But the painful fiascos didn't end there. My determination was beginning to border on masochism. A new product had hit the market, promising to excel where other products failed. Now we were getting fancy...

The epilator was a new product designed to rip out your hair, similar to waxing, but without the mess. They were expensive, but their companies swore up and down that if everything else failed, the epilator would save the day.

Well it didn't. Yes, it got the hair, but only if you let it grow out long enough for the epilator's thousands of "fingers" to catch hold of them to wind them up and pull them out. I tested this on my underarms as they were the easiest to let the hair grow out on and still hide.

Well, I don't think I've ever cussed so much in my life. Using an epilator is synonymous to tickle torture - it seems absurd that something such as yanking a hair out would be considered torture, yet the continuous pin pricks of your hair tearing out of the follicle becomes unbearable after a while.

Plus, the epilator is not a precision instrument. You have to continually go over the same spot again and again and again. It'll catch a hair and yank it, but it won't get pulled out, and so you yank continuously on the same hairs until one finally pulls free. And you continue, and you continue. I almost lost my mind.

I held out because at least it was working.

But then two days later, my underarms were riddled with ingrown hairs that created these huge, nasty bumps. Well at that point, I would have preferred the hair. I still couldn't wear sleeveless shirts!

I bashed the heck out of that thing before throwing it away.

For a while, I went back to my razor, because at least shaving got most of the hair. I slowly gave into the realization that I may just never have hairless skin. I had considered laser hair removal and electrolysis, but they were above my budget. I simply couldn't afford them and the potential health risks associated were hard to swallow - especially after all my bad luck with hair removal products.

But then one day, I saw an ad for an electric shaver that came with a money back guarantee. I knew better than to get excited, but in the spirit of trying everything, I ordered one.

When I opened the package, I was incredulous. It was just this little cylindrical shaver with a mesh covering on top of three blades. Yeah right, I thought. But then I tried it on my legs, and I saw my hair disappear. No pain, no mess, I could even shave dry. And the shaver cut each hair so close to my skin that I could barely detect the hair anymore. For my thick, excessive hair this is a BIG DEAL.

So I tried it on my underarms, and again, it shaved far closer than a razor, and without any pain! I waited a few days as a real test, to see if I'd get any nasty bumps or ingrown hairs. My skin stayed spotless.

I couldn't believe it.

To celebrate, I bought two pairs of shorts, a new bathing suit, and several tank tops and tube tops. Summer was on its way, and for the first time in my life, I went outside with minimal clothing and I felt beautiful. I may not have been as hairless as many women out there without my problem, but my body shaver gave me the best experience removing body hair I could have hoped for, and for less money than anything else I tried.