I have never touched a razor in my life. After seeing the gashes that decorated my friends’ legs in middle school, the act of shaving was deemed unappealing and scary. Why would I risk cutting myself, especially if I would have to repeat the process a mere couple days later? And waxing? Forget about it. Not only did I believe it was too money and time-consuming, I feared waxing would produce “40 Year Old Virgin” type hysteria due to the pain.
Now that I’ve grown older and know that I actually have a rather high pain tolerance, shaving and waxing no longer have the same cringe-inducing effect on me. However, I continue to evade these methods since I have found my own holy grail, the epilator. The epilator is a little device that is equipped with dozens of tweezers. The epilator I personally use is called the “Emjoi Soft Caress Cordless Hair Remover” and is equipped with 36 tweezers. It is about the size of a closed fist and in true girly-girl fashion, is pink and purple. When the epilator is turned on, the tweezers rotate, plucking away the hairs that it grazes. Since the hairs are being plucked at the root, the results are akin to that of waxing, much longer than the results produced by shaving. My epilator has two settings, a very fast setting which is used for legs, armpits, arms, etc… and a slower one for the face. I have avoided using my epilator on my face since one, I’m scared that it may be too harsh and fast for the delicate skin on the face, and two, I don’t love the idea of using of putting a device that I use for my armpits on my face.
The main reason I love epilating is the extreme convenience of it. Epilating both my legs and armpits takes me at most five minutes since the hair gets removed at an insanely quick pace that could only be produced by a machine. Even better, I epilate about once every two weeks. That’s it. Last fall, I only needed to charge my epilator once the entire quarter since I used it so infrequently. Who can say that they shave biweekly and get away with it? An extra bonus is that an epilator can end up paying for itself. After dropping $50 for the initial purchase, I found that there was no need to buy anything else for hair-removal needs. My epilator will, of course, break one day and need to be replaced, but I’ve had mine for a year and half and it works just as well as it did the first time.
Although I love my epilator and want to preach my success story, everyone is different so some of us are bound to have varying results. There are certain caveats I should disclose that may be giving me an “advantage” with epilating. First of all, I am not that hairy of a person to start with and the hair I do have is rather fine, so even when I decide not to epilate, it isn’t altogether noticeable. I attribute this to years of swimming and having my hair repeatedly disintegrated by chlorine. Also, as I mentioned above, I can deal with pain fairly well. While I experienced slight pain the first time I epilated, it went away within a couple minutes after I got used to the sensation. Nowadays, I feel nothing when I epilate. I do have friends, however, who have admitted to crying or even needing to take Advils due to the pain.
Yet if you’re an individual who can deal with a little initial pain and is sick of shaving, I recommend going the mechanical route and getting your first epilator. It’ll be one of the smarter decisions you make while at school.
[In case anyone is wondering, these are 100% my own opinions]