So I’m just sitting around at home tonight, thinking that I would sure be interested in some method of getting rid of all my extra hair if I possibly could, but I don’t know any methods to do this at home. I have a vague recollection of a home electrolysis machine, the infamous Epilady, and some advertised products that are supposed to just wipe hair away (yeah, right), but I don’t really know how well any of these things works. Thus, my General Question.
Has anyone had good results with any home methods? What did you use to get rid of the hair? Was the result permanent? Was it painful / messy / expensive / all of the above? Would you recommend it to anyone else?
This is a sort of survey about personal experiences, so I’ll move this thread to IMHO. A General Question would be more along the lines of “Have there been any controlled scientific studies of the efficacy of hair-removal products?”
Well, there ya go. I was thinking “Hmm, whether the hair is gone or not isn’t really an opinion”, so into General Questions it went. Thanks for the move, bibliophage.
Permanent? I think laser treatment is the only really “permanent” treatment, and that can take over a year of sessions to complete.
If you’re talking about alternatives to shaving, electric tweezers seem to be the best way to go, if you have a high pain threshold. No messy (and sometimes extremely irritating) creams or wax crap, and they give you the same smoothness of a waxing for just as long (because they rip the hair out at the root). Not permanent, but over time the hair will grow in less and less thick, plus you’ll only have to go at it every four weeks or so (more frequently at the beginning, because apparently, the hairs can sometimes just break instead of being pulled out). It’s supposed to feel like Satan is prodding you with flaming devil-bees the first few times you do it, but after that, it’s no big deal.
A bit of advice? Avoid Epil-stop as if it is a cream made of the essence of the aformentioned flaiming Devil Bees!
I tried it on a whim and the “wipe off” included several layers of my skin. OW! Seriously, whatever chemicals are in that stuff turn even the remaining skin fragile and prone to splitting open.
Don’t get the kind of tweezy-plucker that looks like a coily spring – those hava bad habit of breaking the hairs and are more likely to cause ingrown hair.
Braun makes a good line of electric tweezy gizmos that use rotating disks (sorta). You want something that pulls the hair straight out.
The tweezy gizmos also will hurt much, much less after the first time as long you do it often an don’t let the hair grow back very long. Think of a pyramid – the base is much wider than up near the point, right? Hair is tapered to a point. You want to pluck the sucker when it’s still the skinny point of a baby hair.
And you want to use your fingers to make the skin taught as you’re plucking, otherwise the elastic give of your skin absorbs some of the plucky-pull and the hairs may break (leading to ingrowns again) and it hurts more if you yank a little fuzzy unsuccessfully.
The results are great. I find it much, much smoother than a shave and it lasts a lot longer.
I tried home electrolysis for some annoying chin hairs, and figured while I was at it to do some of the shaggier parts below my eyebrows. The fine eyebrow hair came out pretty easily and mostly stayed away. The chin hairs were a bitch, I tried over and over, and they still came back, so I finally gave up. They seem to grow from deep in the skin, and they’re coarse, maybe that has something to do with it. So basically, I would not recommend home elecrolysis.
My dermatologist says that laser hair removal works for dark hairs and is permanent.
Maybe I’ll try the electric tweezers. Next stop, google to find out where the heck to buy things like that. Someday when I’m rich, I plan to have lots and lots of laser hair removal, but until that day, I guess I’ll just have to keep on bleaching/plucking/dying/shaving/waxing. ::heavy sigh::
