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| Us T Girls who
need to be smooth all over have usually tried quite a few things in our time.
Shaving, waxing, hair removal creams and probably every thing short of rhino
dung in search of smooth skin that can last for more than a few
hours. An old hair removal system thats coming back into fashion now is epilation. These are devices similar in appearance to electric razors but work by pulling the hair out rather than by shaving it off. Now some people find epilation a bit painful and I certainly have some friends who suggested its not a great method because firstly it hurts like hell and secondly it can cause severe rashes on the skin. But, despairing of shaving recently I decided to grit my teeth and try an epilator for a bit and heres my report on the experience. |
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| I was getting tired of the daily
shaving ritual and a T Girl friend of mine who had good results using epilation
nagged me to try it out. So I set off for Argos, one of the few places that
seemed to sell these devices for a bit of catalog shopping. Theres a limited
choice of hardware for this and it really came down to two Braun models and a
Philishave model. I was swayed by the Braun because it looked like a newer
design ( The Philishave thing looked like something from the 1950s ) and the
blurb for the Braun mentioned it had an interchangeable epilation head with a
reduced pain head for people new to epilation. bearing in mind a friends
comment that one of these would not be out of place in a torture facility I
opted for the low pain promise from Braun. The unit I opted for was £49 and its pictured above. Arriving home I had a quick look and basically you get the epilator, a mains lead for it, some gel packs and an insulated glove plus two heads. One for low pain and one for people who can grin and bear it.
The 'low pain' head has fewer tweezers so removes less hair at a time and as a result reduces the pain - in theory. More of that later. The gel packs supplied are supposed to be placed in the freezer until they are frozen down and then you place them in the insulated glove. The gloves there so your hand doesn't get frozen while you hold the gel packs against your skin. The book suggested you use them to 'freeze' the skin so you don't feel the pain from the epilator as its gets to work ripping out hairs. I found the pain from freezing was actually worse than the epilator so gave them a miss and got on down to start removing hair from my legs. To give the machine a chance I let my hair grow out for a few days so it had something to get to grips with. THE PAIN STARTS HERE..... The first thing I noticed when I used the epilator was - IT REALLY BLOODY HURTS ! I mean it girls, call me wimpy but after maybe 15 minutes worth of using it I was almost exhausted from bearing up under the constant assault of pain on my legs. After a while I sussed a way to do it without it hurting quite so much which was to lightly and quickly run it over the hairiest areas so quick that it never got a chance to take out more than a few hairs at a time. Its slower but makes the whole thing easier to cope with. The pain you feel will obviously depend on the amount of hair you have and how thick the hairs are. I didn't use the freezer gel bags as I found that to be effective they just took to long and also made my skin hurt worse. The low pain head seemed to make almost no difference and was a hell of a lot slower so I gave up on that and decided to just nuke the hairs with the maximum pain head instead. Now someting that does make a difference to the pain is that the model I bought has a pair of vibrating rollers either side of the epilation drum. This are supposed to massage the skin a bit and reduce the pain and they DO seem to work. I removed them ( they just clip off ) to see if they made a difference and it certainly hurt worse without them. Whether thats just because they keep the drum away from the skin and reduce the chances if the tweezers 'nipping' you or if they are just effective on the massage front I cant say. The whole process of doing the legs the first time was very slow and took maybe as much as 2 hours to do both legs. Afterwards I seemed to have escaped any rash and was quite chuffed about that until about 12 hours later when my legs - especially the inside of my thighs were covered in red lumps where the hairs had been ripped out. The rash in some areas was so bad it was quite alarming but for me it went down quite quickly in about 24 hours. Best on balance NOT to use these devices before a big night out unless your using them regularly. Over time apparently your skin gets hardened to it and the hairs get finer so the rash reduces considerably. It was amazing how long the hairs it ripped out were. hairs that while attached to me were maybe less than 0.5mm long when pulled out are the best part of 5-6mm - so they are in quite deep which is why you get the rash. BREAKING THE PAIN BARRIER..... The following day the rash had abated somewhat and my legs were smoothish but there were still stray hairs. I decided to buzz the epilator over the legs again and found by now it didn't hurt half so badly as the day before. The hairs are fewer and also my legs were still a bit numb I guess form the treatment they had been subjected to the previous day. On day 3 I noticed a few more hairs had popped up and thus discovered the real trick to using these machines. Your hair grows in cycles and not all hairs are up and out at any one time sooooooooo when you first start off you need to be using the epilator every day. After about a week you will find that its getting harder to find new hair growth and the ones that have already been plucked will take quite some time to grow back if they ever do. After a week or so of constant use you can cutback and use the epilator just once a week/month depending on your own hair growth. LONG TERM SMOOTH....... Now truth to tell by about day 4 I was starting to wonder if this whole thing was a waste of time as each day there seemed to be more hairs sprouting out and epilating is a hell of lot slower than using a razor but then I noticed thet there were areas that were still smooth after 3 or 4 days when if they had been shaved they would have been getting quite fuzzy by now. Therein lies the beauty of the epilator. I have been using it for a around two weeks and still give my legs a quick buzz each morning with it but its finding almost nothing to wrench out by now and the legs have stayed lovely and smooth the whole time where before I would have had to shave every single day and the hairs would be back inside a few hours making my legs fuzzy. I have found the epilator to be pretty effective but if I want to be even smoother then a quick wet shave over the legs will take out any hairs that are too fine or too short for the epilator to deal with. The difference is that before I started epilating shaving could take quite some time whereas now its a real 5 minute job. I do find that rubbing in some skin cream after epilating seems to work at reducing the rash a bit and also helps to calm the skin down as well as help to mak it a bit smoother. I use just a cheap skin cream. Evening Primrose from Boots which seems to be ok for me. THE SENSITIVE BITS.... The manufacturers say that epilators are unsuitable for bikini lines and for sensitive skin round areas like the nipples. I started off trying a small area round my bikini line and found that its not to bad. The best method I have found is to shave first then let the epilator take out any strays, then start using it every day after shaving so it only get a few hairs to pluck out - over about a week I have managed to epilate all my pubes quite painlessly and its got a tremendous advantage for me. If I were to shave I would need to do it daily and risk a shaving rash whereas the rash from the epilator lasts a bit longer BUT you will stay smooth for ages. I also ran the epilator over my body hair - its pretty agonizing round the chest but in the end worth it because you will stay smooth for days at a stretch. Round my nipples ? Sorry girls for me its way too painful so they will have to stay shaved for the time being VERDICT...... If you can take the initial pain, put up with the rash at the start and can take the time to epilate every single day for a week or so ( the initial session will take maybe 2 hours, subsequently you will need to spend about 30 minutes a day getting down to 5-10 minutes a day towards the end of the week) then I for sure would recommend it. Don't expect to be smooth after the first go instead see it as a long term system. The manufatures state it can take 6-8 weeks to get used to it and for the process to be effective and remember thats for a genetic girl with finer hair and less of it. I have heard that some people just cant adjust to it and will always develope nasty rashes as a result of using these machines but the manufacturers say most people will adjust to it given time. It can take up to 6 weeks though before your skin is able to cope without a rash developing. I have found after only about 2 weeks the rash after use is veru much reduced as of course fewer hairs are available for pulling out. In a nutshell .....Its slow, its painful but quite effective and beauty never comes cheap. |
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