OK, I know this is stupid, but if anyone is curious about these rather draconian devices, ask away.
I recently came across the Braun silk-epil Xelle on Amazon, and the overwhelmingly positive reviews made me decide to try it. It arrived a few days ago. I’ve been following theadvice of this reviewer:
So far, I rather like it. It hurts, and it’s more intimidating that I expected with it’s crazy, loud, whirling wheel of tweezer things, but it doesn’t hurt as bad as I thought it might. I’ve never waxed before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I’ve switched to one about a years ago, I have a very high pain tolerance, so I just do it all at once, and pain be damned. Takes about an hour for my legs, arms, armpits, and bikini line, and lasts about 4 weeks.
Get a loofah and some apricot scrub, and remember to keep your skin well exfoliated to prevent ingrown hairs as regrowth occurs.
I don’t have any questions but I’ll chime in anyway. I’ve used a few different epilators. If anyone is thinking about getting one - don’t get a really cheap one! I’ve been using the Emjoi Caress for a while and it works really well. I bought the corded version so I don’t have to worry about a battery dying. (I’d like to get this one… 72 tweezer heads!: http://www.emjoi.com/hair-removal/epilators/Emjoi-Emagine-72-Tweezer-head-Epilator.html)
I have dark hair so my legs never looked smooth and my underarms always had a shadow even after shaving. It has made a big difference. I use it on my legs, arms, underarms and bikini line. I usually go over my legs and arms every few days to get any hairs that have grown out. I haven’t used my razor much in a few months.
It hurts, but I get used to it after the first 30 seconds or so on each area. For me it’s better than waxing. I don’t have to wait for the hair to grow out and it only grabs the hair. It doesn’t stick to your skin like wax and there’s no mess to deal with.
Ha, I came in the ask this exact question. I have blond hair on my legs and arms, so I’m not really bothered to go all out in the hair-removing department there. But I feel like it’s hardly worth it to do the bikini line if I end up with the nether region version of five’o’clock shadow.
Had one of these. Hurt like hell but I could stand it… until, after a few months of use, despite frequent exfoliation, it left me with some pretty mean ingrowns and scars. Took a few years for everything to heal, but I’ve got pretty sensitive skin, and have friends who swear by epilators, so good luck!
I haven’t yet. I plan on it, but I’m still a little scared of the thing. My lower leg hair is darkish and stiffer than my upper leg hair, and it hurts much worse to epilate that region. I can barely feel it on my upper thighs. So I’m thinking the much more substantial bikini area hair is going to kill me (same with arm pit hair), but I’ll get brave enough to try it one of these days.
Cat Fight, did you exfoliate? All the reviews say that helps. I’ve never had an ingrown hair that I can remember, so hopefully I’m not prone to them.
On the bikini area especially, hold the skin taut with your other hand. This helps minimize the pulling that goes on.
I have only had ingrowth problems in the bikini area, and frankly, I don’t exfoliate enough. The legs barely hurt at all when I do them (more like a short prickle that fades immediately), but the bikini area and underarms can hurt, and the recommendation of shaving first and then starting right away is a good one; it helps a lot to “ease” into it, and I recommend doing this if you stop epilating for a while and need to start up again - trying to pluck out long hairs can hurt and result in hairs that break above the surface instead of being pulled out. The underarms really turn out well when I epilate them, and I don’t get the problem of the dark dots of under-skin stubble showing through like I do when I shave.
For posters who have done both (or, better yet, all three): does it have the potential to damage the skin more or less that waxing or sugaring?
(My skin seems to be rather delicate - pulling off tape from getting blood drawn results in me losing a layer of skin if I’m not gentle and slow about it, and I have this horrible image in my head of pulling off a wax-strip’s worth of skin instead of just hair. I’ve only ever shaved.)
I haven’t seen any skin damage on me from either sugaring or epilating. The one time I tried home waxing (haven’t had it done by someone else), the wax got stuck to my skin and the efforts to get it off weren’t pretty.
The worst that happens to me with epilating is that sometimes when I’m working on the bikini area and haven’t done this in a while, I get some “chicken skin” effect for a while after (say an hour at most) and sometimes a few spots will bleed a little if a deep-rooted hair gets yanked out hard. Epilating doesn’t really touch the skin proper, no more than a safety razor might.
If you can’t bear to pull out a hair from your leg with a tweezers, then epilating might not be for you. It doesn’t feel like lots of tweezers at once when you’re actually doing it, but it may hurt more or less on some people.
Just wanted to say that this thread inspired me to go grab my emjoi and give my legs a try, even though I just shaved yesterday (got lazy today and didn’t bother.) It didn’t hurt, since there wasn’t much hair to work with…but I did get some! Maybe I’ll try to make it a regular thing and see if I can make any significant progress.
I’ve realized that hair removal has apparently become my new hobby…shaving for legs and underarms…epilator for the arms…waxing for eyebrows…and I finally decided to go for it and get the laser treatment for the bikini line. I’m on my fifth laser treatment, with only one left to go before I’m officially done!
And I’m curious if anyone who uses an epilator regularly has noticed any change in the texture or amount of hair that grows back? I’ve not really noticed any difference when I use mine regularly, and I’m wondering if I just don’t stick to it enough?
I did, but my skin is pretty sensitive so exfoliating doesn’t do it a world of good normally, and I have a tendency to pick at blemishes, so maybe it wasn’t the greatest combo.
I always use sugar. I prefer to get it all over with quick, like ripping off a bandage, in preference to the excruciating long drawn-out torture of a little here, a little there…
But now you’ve got me thinking. Sugaring has many advantages, the only drawback being you need to grow the hair out some before you sugar again. From the epilator instructions, it sounds like you could keep it up more frequently to maintain hairlessness steadily. Except your instructions say to do it once a month. Sugaring frequency is about once in 6 weeks, which doesn’t give much of an advantage to the epilator if it’s done monthly. If it would be feasible to use it say once a week, I might consider switching for that reason.
I’ve definitely noticed it on my lower legs; can’t really tell about the thighs (my hair there has always been near-colorless and very thin in the shaft), and it doesn’t seem to have thinned it out in the bikini or armpit areas.
Johanna, I definitely can epilate more like once a week with no apparent problems. I don’t have sensitive skin, though, so I may be more resistant to pain from plucking and that kind of thing.
Don’t you love how these products advertise as “painless.”
Yeah maybe if you take that Michael Jackson drug, where you have to have an anesthesiologist next to you or you don’t wake up, it’s “painless.”
Somehow I can’t imagine taking a device, which is really nothing more than a bunch of electronic tweezer grouped together and designed to RIP the hairs out of your body, can really be painless.
There’s something for Mr Obama to work on, a federally regulated definition of “painless.”
Someone on youtube compared the sensation to that prickly feeling when your leg falls asleep. I think that’s a pretty accurate description. It hurts, but not for long, and it isn’t agony or anything. Supposedly it gets much less painful after the first few times, but I’ve only done it twice and can’t vouch for that. The second time was easier than the first, though. I’m happy with it so far.
So…I got mine about a week ago. It hurts **a lot less **than I anticipated, it only really hurt when I tried my underarms, and I’m pleased that the plucked chicken look afterwards (might be more noticable in pale, pale skin) fades away after a few hours. One of the reviewers was dead-on accurate when they said you’d have to do it every couple of days at first because of the growth of individual hairs varying.
But does anyone have any advice for the knees? I have some very fine, very blonde hairs on my knees and upper legs, and they don’t get caught so far. Suppose if I leave them be for a while they’ll grow long enough to get picked up by the epilator?
