#30dayglowup - Day 14
No body hair without any professional treatments and for cheap? Let's find out how...
I’ve always
been pretty lazy when it comes to body hair removal because it’s something that’s
never been a huge insecurity of mine and having hair anywhere on my body doesn’t
particularly bother me. For most of my life I’ve just shaved whenever there’s
some sort of occasion or when I feel like removing the hair in that area – even
doing sports and having my legs out a lot I’m simply not that fussed about
putting a lot of time into body hair removal. So with that, any opportunity to
reduce the amount of time I was having to put in was something and I was
interested in, and recently I began looking into ways to reduce the amount of
my body hair over time so that in the long run I’m having to put in less
effort.
Now that I’ve
had a lot of free time during lockdown, I’ve really optimized my body hair
routine to the point where I’m confident recommending it to other people. Also
a lot of the products I mention are either cheap up front or more expensive but
work out cheaply in the long run compared to professional treatments. So, if
you’re in the search of a routine that’s economically viable, minimal effort
and will work over time, then just keep reading.
Types of hair removal I do at home
IPL laser hair removal
I use the ‘Handheld
IPL Laser Hair Removal’ gadget, retailing for a range of prices depending on
where you look – I got mine from laziskin for £79.99 but I’m sure I’ve seen it
for cheaper elsewhere. This works as an at-home laser hair removal treatment,
claiming to reduce hair growth over time by using pulses of light to destroy
hair follicles.
I have
noticed a reduced amount of hair after using this product on and off for a
while now. It claims that you need to use it 12 times after shaving, with a
week in between for your hair growth cycle, to see the full results. I’ve been
pretty bad at using it regularly, so I’ve maybe used it around 6 times now with
big gaps in between. It does work so far and I’m interested to see with
extended use what my results will be, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as
effective as professional laser hair removal and that’s reflected in the much
cheaper price. It can also be a bit painful, not intolerable by any mains, but
it does feel a bit like holding a hot bulb to your skin if you’re not careful. You
also have to try and go over the entire area of the skin you’re wanting to
focus on which can be very time consuming, although it is pretty mindless so
you can do it in the background of another task, but it’s part of the reason
why I only use it on small areas of my body because my entire legs take me
around an hour and a half.
Epilating
Epilating
is the main form of hair removal that I do on my legs. Yes, it is painful, and
it sucks while you have to do it. But I’d rather have to epilate once a month
to fully remove my leg hairs than have to shave and go over my entire legs with
a laser every week. I use the Braun Silk Epil 9 that retails on Amazon
for around £85. It is very effective and a high quality epilating, but honestly you could
probably get very similar results for much cheaper
Shaving
Can’t escape
your bog-standard razor no matter how hard I try. I use a razor on smaller
areas before IPL, and I also use a facial razor to remove the peach-fuzz on my
face. I don’t have any particular recommendations for razors or shaving creams,
for me they basically all work the same. I use a men’s razor because they’re a
bit cheaper and more sensitive than a lot of women’s ones, and I think the
basic Boots shaving cream which works perfectly fine.
Plucking/ threading
These two I
save specifically for my eyebrows – essentially if I can’t manage to get to
Superdrug to get my eyebrows threaded, I’ll pick up the tweezers myself and get
rid of those out of place eyebrow hairs. Again, no product recommendations here
– any decent pair of tweezers are going to do the job.
My hair removal routine
Face (Once a week)
I will use
a facial razor along with a facial oil (I use The Ordinary Rosehip oil) to
gentle remove the peach fuzz from my entire face, including my jawline. This
isn’t really necessary if you’d prefer not to, but I find it makes me feel a
lot more confident especially with makeup on. I also tend to get these random
dark hairs on my face that can be pretty noticeable, so by shaving once I week I
limit how long these get before they’re too obvious. It also makes your
eyebrows look a lot cleaner – if you remove the extra hairs from all around
them it makes it a lot more of a distinguishable, clean line above your eyebrow.
Whether to decide to do this or not is personally preference, but for me it
makes me feel a lot more confident so I’m happy to keep it up.
Eyebrows (Once a week or once a month)
On a
recommendation from a friend I use Superdrug’s brow bar to get my eyebrows
threated for only £7, which I only have to around once a month with touch ups
here and there. However, if I’m unable to do this, as has been the case for the
whole of lockdown, I have got the knack for plucking my own eyebrows. The pain
doesn’t bother me, and I tend to touch them up and give them a trim around once
a week to keep them manageable.
Armpits + Bikini line (One a week)
For these
smaller but more noticeable areas, I like to shave them once a week and then
use the IPL system on them. Shaving doesn’t take me very long and neither does
the laser as they’re both small areas. There is a bit of pain (Just feels very
hot for a second), but it’s completely manageable. As the IPL is sort of
effective but doesn’t fully work, I’m happy to do it on smaller areas as it’s
not very time consuming and hopefully if I do it continually it will
drastically reduce the amount of hair over time.
Legs (Once a month)
My legs are
honestly the only area that I can tolerate the pain of epilating on – people who
do their armpits or bikini are honestly so brave to me. I find that if I epilate
my legs once a month (I usually only go a bit above the knee because my thigh
hairs are lighter and thinner) then they become a bit stubbly by the end, but
they mostly hold out. One very useful thing about epilating is that you don’t
get those dots from shaving which become very noticeable when applying fake
tan. Once I get into a more regular tanning routine closer to winter it’ll be a
lot more convenient to not have to accommodate for shaving time when I’m planning
when to tan. Epilating is 100% the way to go and if I could do it on all of my
hairs I would, but there’s no way I can deal with that pain. To me I can feel
every single one of my hairs being ripped out and I’ll accept that I’m a wimp
about it.
Summary schedule
Every week:
- Dermaplane face
- Shave and IPL armpits and bikini line
Every month:
- Thread eyebrows
- Epilate legs
A note on body hair confidence
If you want
never want to touch any hair on your body and leave it all alone then that
is completely fine. Don’t let me or anyone else give you the impression
that you’ve got to be all smooth and hairless. The idea of body hair being unappealing
on women came from razor companies wanting a larger target audience and expanding
their marketing campaigns – the entire thing is a social construct. I prefer to
get rid of a lot of my body hair but equally it doesn’t bother me if I have
some on show. You do whatever makes you comfortable and don’t let society or anyone
else tell you otherwise.
In conclusion
I hope this
blog was in some way helpful to you – I don’t really stick to the basics when
it comes to hair removal and I hope my adaptation of different methods has
inspired you to give something else a try. The only real thing that bothers me
are the random dark hairs on my face but dermaplaning (fancy word for face
shaving) tends to sort that out. I hope you’ve enjoyed day 14 of my #30dayglowup
tips and tricks and find it useful. As always if you have any questions or blog
post requests contact me through any of my social medias, and I hope you’re
having a lovely day.
Add your comment