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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Hair Removal Woes

Everyone knows that hair removal is a pain. Shaving is tedious, but cost effective(ish), yet you have to do it over and over and over and that is tiresome. It cuts the hairs at an angle making them stronger and sharper and for someone like me, with sensitive skin, any skin that rubs those sharp blades are quickly irritated. 


Waxing is a great alternative, but the salon is expensive and time consuming. Waxing at home is, in my experience, on a continuum between hilarious and painful. I have tried the wax that needs to be microwaved and that has never worked. I just last night tried the Veet strips and today I have less hair, but also less skin and wax that I cannot get off...not all of it is in a very convenient place to even try to remove. Yeah, that's unpleasant. 


In my experience of having a professional do the waxing for me, I have developed some very strong opinions. In Athens (Georgia, not Greece) I went to this wonderful spa (Urban Sanctuary) that used products that were as close to natural as possible. The wax they used was hard wax, meaning that you pull the wax itself off, no strips needed. It was all natural, it didn't stick to your skin and it didn't leave any residue behind. I would recommend picking a spa that uses this wax, or buying this wax yourself if you want to do it at home. 


The spa I go to here in China uses hot wax with strips and generally irritates my skin. I have never in my life had an ingrown hair until I started going to this spa and now I can literally count 5+ at any given time. These ingrown hairs were the reason I got the Veet strips, thinking that at least if I did it myself I would have no one to blame but yours truly and it would cost me less. As it turns out, I do not have the stones to rip strips from my own skin...I am too much of a wuss. So I had hubs help me. In the process, I had maybe 2 layers of skin ripped off, 75% of the 100% of the hair I was trying to remove actually removed AND hubs accidentally got my hair (from my head) stuck on one of the wax strips...goodbye to 20-30 strands that had to be CUT OUT. I was pissed slightly upset. 
Not as effective as the regular but less painful
Hurts like hell and ripped off my skin
 So, now I will now continue on my journey to finding a better solution to this problem. Lazer hair removal would be great if....

  1. I were in a country where I trusted someone to do it 
  2. I had the kind of expendable income necessary to pay for it

I have neither the trust nor the expendable income so that will have to wait a few years.


What will I try next? Hard wax? Epilator? Sugaring? Does anyone have an experience with doing either of these at home? Please share...I need all the help I can get. 

2 comments:

  1. I've had laser hair removal (brazilian-WOWZA!) and it hurt like a MOTHER! I had been getting brazilians for about 2 years straight before the laser so I was used to the pain. But, it hurt so bad that I never went back for my 2nd session and I had already paid for it! I'd stick to the hard wax from a professional! The place I go to only uses hard wax and it's SO much better! If you do go to a place that uses strips, make sure it's a good quality. I've been to a place where the strips were a cloth-like material and I loved it! Obviously, I'm a waxing pro so any other questions you have I'm sure I can answer :)

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  2. This is my problem in France too!

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