Hair Removal & Me

As we're now in summer (or as close as we can get), this seems topical. Female hair removal. Of the legs.

Wax strips

My very first attempt at hair removal was when I was about 12 or 13. It was a blistering hot day and me and a friend were in my room and thought it would be the perfect time to try waxing our legs. We went to a school where we could only wear skirts - no trousers - and in summer wore short socks, so in order to avoid feeling like bears, we wanted smooth legs.

No one explained how to use the strips. I'm not even sure how I got them - I think I just chucked them in the trolley when I went round Tescos with my dad. We labouriously smoothed them onto our legs and then peeled them off. Of course it hurt, so we decided to do it slowly. Which meant that it hurt far more than it would do normally and didn't exactly work.

Epilator

Considered "cruel and unusual punishment" in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, appearing in torture chambers alongside the rack and the iron maiden, this instrument of pain was gifted to me by one of my dad's girlfriends (I say one of - it's not like he had 10 girlfriends at once or something). She said "One day you'll have a boyfriend, and boys like being able to run their hands up your legs and feel it's all smooth." A piece of advice that gave me a guilty tingle.

Maybe the pain inflicted on me by this horrible machine was down to it being a cast-off. La Girlfriend had got herself a new epilator. Maybe this one didn't turn as fast. Basically, imagine someone very sloo-oo-ooo-oo-oooly using tweezers to pull your leg hairs out one by one. OH GOD. OH GOD!!! I only used this a few times before giving up on it. Every so often, I'd pick it up again, thinking (I suppose as some women approach the agonies of repeated births), "Maybe I just imagined the pain last time. Maybe it doesn't hurt that much. Maybe I just remembered wrong."

But everytime that thing would start gripping at my leg hairs and everytime I'd clear an inch of skin and throw it across the room, wincing as I did so.

(I should point out - this was an old-style epilator. I can't find a photo of it, but it basically had a piece of rubber with slits in it, bowed over, so as it turned the slots tightened over the hairs and yanked them out. OUCH OWWW OUCHIE.)

Depilatory Creme
Magical stuff, it seemed. It didn't hurt! It didn't hurt AT ALL! Well, ok, it metaphorically hurt my sense of smell, but... it was amazing! And I could smear it all over furniture while I waited 15 minutes (yes, it says 10 MAXIMUM on the packet, but I always give it an extra 5 just to make sure). Thing is, it was horribly expensive. And messy. I used one which had a roller thing at the top and it was much better than putting it by hand, but it was about £5 a pop, and this is back in the mid-90s. My pocket money was £1 a week. And of course, all that waiting... just to find out that you've missed a giant patch of hair on the back of your leg.

Silky Mitts

Salvation came in the form of Silky Mitts. My mum suggested these, and thank god she did. They're stupidly cheap - less than £2 for a pack of 3, and they're just soft sandpaper folded round in a mitt styley. My legs were so smooth after using this because not only does it take off your hair, but - seeing as this is sandpaper, the likes of which you could remove a layer of varnish with - you're sheering off a load of dead skin too. And some poor people end up sheering off a layer of live skin - one of my school friends still hasn't forgiven me for the firey stinging sensation she received after using these. My apologies. Trouble is though, if you want to keep the tan on your legs (and with thread veins like mine, it's advisable), constantly ripping off your summer glow with sandpaper isn't the best idea.

Waxing in a Salon
Every so often, when I start to look like a werewolf and I'm up for a bit of pain, I get my eyebrows threaded. It hurts, but it's quicker than tweezering it myself. The pain is swift. It's only £3 and because I go to an Asian beauty parlour, I come out looking like a Bollywood starlet. What's not to love about that? Well, apart from the stinging.

Anyway, one day I had my eyebrows done and clearly because I'm a pain whore, I decided to get my legs waxed. I hadn't been near leg waxing since my disasterous attempt as a 12 year old, and thought - what could go wrong? Really?

OH MY GOD OOOOUUUUCCCCHHH!!!!! Now this really did sting. Yes, it was faster than doing it at home, on yourself. But you get added sound effects; the velcro-style RRRRIPPP! as your hair suit comes shredding away from your skin. It's also somewhat undignified. Now, I know some of you probably get more than just your legs waxed and you're happy with that, but I really did find that going on all fours in my knickers while someone came up behind me with hot wax was something I only want to experience again if it's medically necessary.

More dipilatory creme!

As Silky Mitts aren't always available in even the biggest branches of Boots, I decided to experiment again with dipilatory creme, especially as it was now available in a very handy spray can. Hurrah! No more smearing, no more roller thingy that costs lots of money! I stood in the bath and sprayed. And looked like I had comedy foam shin pads on. And then slipped over in the bath where the spray had landed on the enamel.

And it wasn't exactly cheap, so I got a bargain Immac (sorry, Veet) pump-action bottle, complete with scraper. Trouble with this is, the mess it makes as you pump it into your hand and smear it on. My hand feels a bit perculiar afterwards, but maybe I'm just paranoid, like the time I got ibuprofen gel on my hand and thought it'd go numb. It's cheap but messy and let's face it - smelly and time-consuming.

Shaving
You're no doubt wondering why the hell I haven't mentioned leg shaving yet. This is, I would imagine, by far the most common method of hair removal. Heck, I've got a Gillette Venus for my armpits! And the other day, I wanted to quickly de-fuzz and didn't have time for Immacing (sorry, Veeting), so reached for the Venus and shaved my legs for the first time in my life. I didn't do it in the shower - I didn't use creme - so yes, my legs stung afterwards. But damn, it was quick. And mess free.

It was a revelation, in fact. I'd avoided it all these years, believing that it makes the hair come back worst. But heck, it's hair removal - it's always going to come back anyway. So yes, from now on, I'm going to be a shaven raver (well, at least as far as my legs are concerned). For the meantime, at least, until some other whim takes me....