Popular Hair Removal Products
Heaven knows that hair removal is a constant chore for most women and even some men, especially now that summer is here and you are probably heading outside in shorts, sundresses and bikinis. It seems like the second you finish shaving your legs, you already have new stubble growing in. Besides being tedious, removing hair can also be totally irritating to your skin. Your bare legs are not going to look any prettier if they are covered with angry red bumps. All of these annoying aspects have probably led you on a hunt for the best hair removal products and strategies. There are a handful of options out there for you to try, ranging in degrees of effectiveness and pain involved. Which one suits you best will probably be determined by your skin and hair type, your budget, and your willingness to suffer for beauty.
Razors and Shaving Cream
Good, old fashioned razors and shaving cream are probably the most popular way for both men and women in the United States to remove unwanted hair from all sorts of body parts. Some tough guys and ladies even stick with razors and plain, old soap. Razors work by trimming off hair just above the surface of your skin. You have probably seen plenty of commercials for razors with multiple blades that purport to trim hair as close as possible to your skin without causing irritation. Even these fancy, five blade razors can only cut the hair already growing out of your skin, though. This means that, while you may immediately get perfectly smooth skin, depending upon how fast your hair grows you could end up with stubble literally within an hour of shaving.
Shaving cream is meant to give you a smooth, slick surface to run your razor over. Sometimes, it also has ingredients chosen to condition your skin. One of the problems with shaving, besides the short term effects, is that it irritates a lot of people's skin. Shaving can give you razor burn, which stings and looks like a mess of little red bumps on your shaved parts. Some people also get ingrown hairs. Shaving is not all bad, though. It is cheap, relatively inexpensive, and fast. It is also pretty painless, compared to other hair removal products.
Wax
Waxing is becoming more and more popular in the United States, in particular for bikini lines. Waxing involved spreading wax over the surface of your skin, getting your body hair trapped in the wax, then pulling the hair out by the root with a quick jerk. Obviously this is painful and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a liar. There is no arguing with the effectiveness of this method, though, when done right. When you pull your hair out by the root, it usually takes about six weeks for it to grow back. That's not six weeks of stubble, either, that's at least a month of baby smooth skin.
There is more than one type of wax available. You can buy small waxing strips that you do not need to heat up. These usually have plastic backs. You warm them between your hands, smooth them over your hair, and pull. These small strips are best for small areas, like mustaches or unibrows. If you have a large area to wax, you probably want to use wax that you heat up and spread. Then, either the wax hardens and you pull it directly, or you apply a strip of the paper to the back of it and you pull the paper.
While some women are able to wax themselves at home, most prefer to get this done by professionals at a waxing studio. It goes much faster this way, and a professional will definitely do a better job than you will. If you screw up and tear your hair instead of pulling it all the way out, it will hurt just as much but you'll be left with stubble. Waxing at a studio, especially for your bikini area, is a good long term option for summer but it can be quite expensive.
Depilatory Creams
Do you dare to wear short shorts? Depilatory creams, which have not been popular in the United States since the 1980s, are creams that you spread over your hair, then scrape off. When you scrape them off, the hair on your body magically disappears along with the cream. Actually, this process is not magical but chemical. Depilatory creams work very well and keep your body hairless for about as long as shaving does, but they can be dangerous for people with sensitive skin. Always do a test patch before you spread a depilatory cream all over yourself.
