The only reason I didn’t get an epilator until now is I thought they must not
work well. If they did a good job my friends would have told me about them
years ago.
Well, either my friends are even more behind the news than I am or they’re
cruel and want to see me suffer.
It was my Arabic teacher, Rima, who mentioned epilators a couple of weeks ago.
We were watching the Lebanese movie, Caramel, which opens with a scene
of “sugaring” (same idea as waxing but using a sticky ball of hot sugar). Rima
made a comment about the ritual of sugaring and then added, “But of course we
have Braun nowadays.”
She was referring, of course, to the Braun epilator. I knew that much. I had
been looking casually at epilators in stores for over a year, wondering if it
was worth spending the money on something that would probably require the hairs
to be somewhat long and therefore repugnant before it could catch hold of them,
and which would likely miss at least half of them.
Rima’s comment lit the torch of hope deep within my soul. She made it sound as
if epilators were so effective that they had utterly displaced sugar as the
root-ripper of choice in Lebanon. When it comes to beauty secrets I believe
Lebanese women are far ahead of their Western counterparts. I have an idea that
Brazilian women are like this, too. Both Brazilian and Lebanese women are
probably far too fond of plastic surgery for Canadian sensibilities but they
prioritize their physical appearance. They are not hypocritical about it. We
Canadian women pretend we don’t care about our looks as badly as we do, and
look down our noses at those who make great efforts to improve their
appearance.
The next day I flipped open my laptop and began a search for Braun epilators. I
didn’t even consider any other brand, not only because of Rima’s reference but
also because of all the small household appliances I’ve ever owned, the Braun’s
have always been about ten times better than any other brand. Now when I need
to buy a small appliance I generally just make a beeline for the Braun display
and choose one from among them.
I read some reviews about Braun epilators and was further encouraged. Hair
removal was nearly complete, the ladies said, and the hairs only needed to be a
couple of millimetres long. The only negative comments were about the pain,
which nearly everyone said became less with each use of the epilator.
My heart swelled with glorious visions of stubble-free legs and pits (and
more? If things went really well, who could say what I might decide to pluck?)
and prepared to take the financial plunge. That is to say, I prepared to ask M
to pick one up for me from duty free.
Braun has several models of epilator, with more tweezers as you advance up from
their cheapest model, the Silk-épil 3, with 20 tweezers on the rotating
head, to the Silk-épil 7 with 40 tweezers. I think the different models
do exactly the same thing but you’ll have to make more passes over the skin
with the cheaper model to get all the hairs. The best one, the Silk-épil 7,
cost 562 Dhs (153 US dollars) in the Dubai airport duty free.
I texted M, who was in South Africa at the time and would be coming through
Dubai on his way home, and asked to him to make the wholly worthwhile
investment. M, who never questions my expenditures, especially those
related to clothes and beauty, said he was on it and when he came home a few
days later I found the 7 sitting on my dresser.
I read the instruction booklet and plugged the epilator in to charge. But dig
this: it was already charged. You see what I’m talking about with Braun?
In preparation for the epilator’s arrival I had allowed about five days
post-shave hair growth on my legs. The booklet says that the optimum hair
length for epilation is 2 to 5 mm and, bending over to get a good look at my
legs, I felt satisfied that the hairs were nicely within those parameters.
I gently scrubbed my legs with exfoliating gloves during my shower to make sure
there was no skin lotion residue left on them. A clean hair is an easy-to-pluck
hair. Plus, you don’t want to grease up your epilator. Of course the Braun is
entirely washable if you do need to clean it. In fact, it can be used in the
shower, it’s totally water-friendly.
The epilator has two speed settings: ‘1’ for wimps, and ‘2’ for real women. Do
you really need to ask? Of course I selected ‘1’. A light came on, the little
machine made a noise like a tiny jet engine warming up, and I dipped it down to
alight briefly on my shin. I’d read quite a few remarks about the pain, you
see. I was afraid.
My fear was completely justified. It was as if someone had touched me with a
small current of electricity. But the hairs came out! I kept touching down,
working up to a steady, lawnmower-like buzzing back and forth over the skin and
I could see a mostly-bare path behind the epilator.
I steered the epilator back and forth and round this way and that to catch the
hairs that grew in creative directions. There is a fine, bright headlight on
the epilator which illuminates the area just before it so you can really see
what lurks furtively in the shadows.
An unexpected bonus about the epilator is that nearly all the hairs get
collected inside the cap. It’s wonderful. I thought I’d have a disgusting
shower of hairs to vacuum up afterward but there were only a few that escaped
the cap. The added value of this feature is that seeing all the hairs collected
in the cap gives you an incredible sense of satisfaction. It’s a tangible
reward for the pain you’ve suffered.
I only did my lower legs because the hair above my knees doesn’t amount to much
but there’s no reason you couldn’t epilate all the way up to your eyeballs, if
you wanted to. I did do the tops of my feet. The hair there is fine but it’s on
my feet. I can’t see it without thinking of Bilbo Baggins.
My legs were speckled with red dots for a few days, and they stung in the hot
shower water, but I didn’t care. They were hair-free, and I was about to enjoy
the long-term hairlessness that I previously thought could only come from
waxing.
It took me a week to work up the courage to epilate my underarms. I’d only ever
had them waxed once in my life and that single time had so traumatized me that
I’d never considered doing it again.
I put the “sensitive area” head on the epilator to do my pits. This head
reduces the number of tweezers that will come in contact with your skin. Still,
it felt like a red-hot knife was pressing into my skin when the epilator’s
tweezers bit in. I broke out in a sweat, it was that bad. You may not realise
how serious underarm hairs are in form and will to live. They’re not just
pretending to do something like your leg hairs. They’re thick, and when they’re
stubble-length, fit for epilation, they have about two-thirds of their length
buried under the skin. They have a big club on the root that to my fevered
imagination looked like an anchor. I felt like I was tearing little trees out
of my body.
The worst part when you’re doing the epilation yourself -- and frankly, who are
you going to ask to help you with it? -- is that you can’t make your underarm
skin taut. The pain is very much worse when the skin isn’t stretched out tight
because the tweezers seize the hair and pull it way back before it will
surrender. This gives you a kind of bruising.
My pits were sore for three days. But they were smooth, wonderfully smooth. No
more dark shadow to be seen even directly after shaving.
I have since done a second round on both my legs and underarms. I probably
didn’t even need to do it so soon because I couldn’t see more than a couple of
hairs in either domain. Doing my pits the second time was fairly easy
because there were only a few hairs there. It still hurt like hell to rip them
out but it was nothing like as painful as the initial slash and burn.
Here’s an aside I want to share with you. While searching the net for reviews
of epilators I came across a number of blog posts, written by men, proclaiming
that they refused to date women who didn’t keep their whole bodies (except head
and eyebrows) entirely hair-free. There was special emphasis on the need for
the entire private parts to be as bald and smooth as royal icing. They
actually wrote whole blog posts about these views. Well, I don’t know about you
but if I was a single chick and a man shared that opinion with me I’d have only
one thing to say to him: “What a lovely idea. Let’s begin with you. I’ll get
the epilator and start on your back, and after that we’ll head south of the
equator. When your balls are plucked entirely clean I promise to epilate my own
area.”
Now you’ve heard the news about epilators, girls, and if you choose to continue
shaving or waxing or whatever it is you do I guess I’ll try to respect your
decision but, I mean, did you read this blog post? I’m telling you.