I’ve always been fascinated by laser hair removal. Do the lasers cut off your hair? How do the lasers make it not grow back? Honestly, what are these magical hair killing lasers? Why is it so expensive? Would lasers make razors obsolete? I was full of questions and curiosity, so when the opportunity to use an at home laser hair removal kit presented itself I jumped all in; only to find myself woefully unprepared.
First, it was much smaller than I anticipated. The package the kit came in was no bigger than a shoebox, and the device itself, including the charging station, was about the length of an iPad – the mini kind. I was apprehensive when I saw how small it was. I wondered how it was safe for me to be operating a little laser machine that people normally pay hundreds of dollars to get professionally done at salon. It seemed like I had given myself too much power when, normally, I’m not allowed to hold sharp knives.
I read the directions, then immediately reread the directions. They weren’t exactly clear. The first direction was to shave your leg. Apparently, you need a freshly shaved leg so the lasers can heat and destroy the hair follicles. For some reason I thought the lasers were supposed to shave my legs for me, so it was off to shaving my legs.
I reread the directions again, just in case. I put the device, which is small enough to hold in your palm, directly onto my leg and waited for the flash of bright white. Except, it wasn’t bright white like the directions told me, it was a really scary, angry flash of red. I screamed, promptly dropped the device where it lay on my floor gently humming for thirty seconds until it automatically turned off. Obviously, I had done something terribly wrong and was slightly afraid to look down at my leg. I was, luckily, still in one piece, so after a short break I carried on.
Running the device up and down didn’t hurt like I thought it would. I expected to feel a gentle pulling of my hair out of my follicle, but I just felt the slight warmth the device emitted. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but I didn’t fear it burning me. When I had finished, my legs didn’t feel any different, but I’m not actually supposed to see results until week seven. In the week following my first at home treatment I did notice that it took a little while longer for my legs to feel stubbly, but that may have just been because I was looking to see less hair.
It was a fun experiment, and I’m excited to see if after seven weeks there are any drastic changes. At least now I can say I played with lasers.