Bargain Beauty: The Cost of Hair Removal

 

With summer upon us (technically), it's time to bust out that bikini and show off your miscellaneous sundries. As any lady knows, unsightly razor burn or the dreaded ingrown hair can cause crazy insecurities at the beach.

I've tried almost all of the at-home remedies to remove body hair. I'm really pasty, and I have dark hair, so those mo-fos stick out like a Sri-Lankian girl and a white girl driving through Arkansas with Los Angeles plates who have to pee, but they can only find a McDonalds and they're so scared that they run in holding hands, which makes them look like a bi-racial lesbian couple in the deep South... But I digress.

I tried Nair once, but not only was left with the same amount of hair, I managed somehow to get chemical burns all over my legs (yes, I did an allergy test), and I still have one scar from it.

I've done the waxing route, but it can be real spendy, plus it opens you up to a whole slew of embarrassing possibilities. Back when I was a poor college student in Los Angeles, I was getting waxed at a small Vietnamese nail salon. I had a dreaded ingrown hair, but I figured hey, it couldn't have been the first time the woman would have seen one. Oh, I was very, very wrong. I'm laying on a polyester chair reminiscent of the OB-GYN office at a public health clinic; it was a pale lime green. I was buck naked from the waist down, and my pants (with my undies in the pocket) were folded up on a folding chair next to the door. My waxing lady insisted that my ingrown hair was crabs. I insisted that it was not. Call it a language barrier, or call her a bitch, but she ran out of the room, taking with her her supplies and, for some reason, my pants. So there I am, in fancy pants LA without any pants, and a crazy bitch is running through the salon screaming that I have crabs. If you've ever been to a nail salon where all the staff speaks another language, you know the drill. You're positive that they're talking about you in their native tongue, except that this time, the foreign chatter was accompanied with finger pointing and hysterical laughing, and that was just by the staff. The other clients looked horrified, and whispered slightly more politely behind their freshly manicured fingers. Oh, and did I mention? The crazy bitch was only half done, and I still had wax all over my hoochie coo.

I've tried home waxing, but the results were really sad. I was left with patches of hair and super aggravated skin. Any hair removal product is supposed to make me want to show off my legs, not cover them with aloe and hide in the house for days.

I tried the Braun 5270 Lady Epilator. That was painful, but the pain I was willing to deal with. It was only after a few months, when I noticed that it had left me with the world's most stealth ingrown hairs. I exfoliated, I used lotions, but those suckers hid under the skin. The worst part is that I could see them growing longer, but never coming to the surface. They were ingrown versions of sleeper cells. I spent countless dollars on stupid products that promised to rid me of ingrown hairs. They were all lies.

Why don't I try shaving, you say? Personally, I hate shaving. It's a lame chore that is only compounded by my commitment to cut costs in an extreme way by going sans hot water. I'm not going to lie, shaving with cold water sucks. Plus, you have to do it continuously. Any number of factors could contribute to razor burn, plus any hope of a decent shave requires costly razors, and quite possibly costly shaving gels.

My current goal is to buy the Tria Laser Hair Removal. I'm positive it's the answer to all my hair removal issues, but then again, I cling to pipe dreams. Because Red and I have agreed that we're cutting back on all frivolous costs (read: I can't drop $800 to fulfill my dreams of smooth hairless legs), I've been setting aside $20 every two weeks into a "hair removal fund." Hopefully by my birthday, I'll be able to splurge guilt-free.

In the mean time, I've found my flavor of the month, and its aptly named Magic Blue Shaving Powder. The cons are that it smells terrible, and the instructions are somewhat convoluted. They keep talking about using a spatula to apply and remove the mixture. I can't tell if they're talking about a kitchen spatula, and if so, that's just wrong. I don't want to be using the same spatula to flip pancakes that I use to scrape hair off my legs. I've been using a washcloth instead. I stay hairless for 4 to 5 days, with no nasty ingrowns or razor burn. Plus, it's gentle enough to use on your lady parts, and costing between $2 and $5 a bottle, it's a total steal.

~Meghan

Comments

[Valerie]

I love reading your stuff.

P.S. Adding Magic Shaving Powder to my Amazon cart...

[bostongirl]

By spatula, they mean the flat wooden stick that looks like a doctor's tongue depressor. It is also called a spatula in this context and is the disposable tool most waxing places use to apply wax. It works well as a dull scraper for removing depilatory creams and hair, probably better than the washcloth you mention.

[Meghan Udell -- Shoestring Magazine]

Ahh...

That would make sense. Sometimes it seems so obvious once someone points it out to you, but the image of me scraping off my legs with a kitchen spatula is still pretty funny.

~Meghan