Adventures in Waxing

     This post is perhaps a bit ill-timed, since AB just posted an AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL post about body positivity and not shaving her legs and social pressure and confidence and all that wonderful stuff. And like AB said, we told her that she exudes an air of confidence, even if she doesn't think she does, which is something really special about AB. That being said, I am not confident enough to not shave my legs, even though I REALLY HATE IT. I guess that means it's still something that I'm working through. I love the way my legs feel when they're smooth, but I can also put up with some fuzz. I guess what I'm saying is that leg hair has always been something I've been indifferent about. I shave my legs because I like the results and it's a social norm, but I do it sporadically and usually with a scowl on my face because it takes forever and is tedious. I guess my main point of discontentment with shaving my legs is the time it takes. Maybe if my legs were smaller, it wouldn't take so long. I also don't like that you basically have to shave every single day or else you're bound to have stubble. This is also part of my issue with establishing routines: I simply forget about my legs because they don't bother me. Anyway, all of this is preface to say that I'm exploring alternative options of leg hair removal because I'm not yet to AB's level of awesomeness and confidence, teehee. So I've been researching waxing for a few months and thought it sounded pretty good and easy, and has the potential to give me 8 weeks of maintenance free legs, not to mention a possible reduction of ingrown hairs. (If you're reading this and you're a boy, I don't blame you for checking out and going to play video games or something. Go enjoy the fact that society hasn't formed your brain into believing that you should shave your legs). Anyway, today I bought a package of Sally Hanson waxing strips (the kind you just warm up in your hands, not the kind that require heating in the microwave and slathering on yourself-- I decided to start myself off easy), and here are some of my thoughts on what went down:

-Wax kits, like pretty much everything else in this world, were made for skinny people. There were not nearly enough wax strips to cover the surface area of my legs. I expected to miss maybe a few patches, but I was really only able to wax about 35% of my legs (basically from the knee down and a little bit on my thighs). Honestly, I'm not sure that the amount of wax strips they gave me would have even been enough for someone much smaller than myself, because while they did give me six extra large strips, the other 24 strips were pretty dinky. I also think that had it been a kit where I had to heat and slather the wax myself, I might have been able to cover more area. This is something to try out in the future.

-It doesn't hurt that bad. Okay, it hurts, but it wears off very quickly, and it's definitely nowhere near the most painful thing I've ever experienced. I would say that for me personally, the most painful areas to wax were down around my ankle. I found this surprising and I'm not sure why that was? I also waxed around 2:30 PM which is close to the time of day when your pain tolerance is supposedly the highest, so maybe that had something to do with the fact that it didn't hurt as much as I'd been expecting. It's also honestly such a mental thing. I was in my bedroom listening to music and doing stuff on my phone intermittently, so I just kind of yanked whenever I had a free second. Which made it less of a huge deal.

-My hair is patchy and grows in a million directions. Which isn't particularly conducive to waxing. On the directions they tell you to smooth down the wax strip in the direction of your hair growth, but my hair doesn't actually all grow in one direction. Neither does my arm hair for that matter. I guess it's just a weird thing about me but my hair has always grown in a million different directions. I'm sure that was part of the reason why some hairs just didn't come out with the rest, because they weren't grabbed by the wax since they were growing in a different direction. Also, I have spots on my legs where hair just doesn't grow at all, or very little. (This is kind of a family trait). While I obviously don't mind that a large portion of both of my legs stays nearly hairless pretty much all the time, it actually kind of inhibits the waxing process because your hair is supposed to be 1/4 inch long (about the length of a grain of rice). So most of my hair met this requirement, but not all of it. So I literally couldn't wax it because it wouldn't have come out and the wax would have just irritated my skin.

-I really like the concept, just not necessarily the method I chose. I will definitely be trying different methods of waxing, because I don't think the "easy" wax strip method was necessarily for me. I'm probably going to try some DIY waxing and wax strips too because it's way cheaper and more personalized. I can make as much wax as I need, not to mention that there are recipes for completely water soluble waxes (meaning it's washable and dissolvable) and I can go eco friendly by making wax strips out of old pairs of jeans and rewashing them. Here's a recipe I'm going to try out. As far as the concept, what I like about it is that it's incredibly rudimentary, but makes total sense. The idea of using a sticky substance to yank hair out by the roots has been around for literally thousands of years, far longer than shaving with a razor. If it was good enough for Cleopatra, it's good enough for me, I say. There's also several health benefits to waxing. When done correctly, it can greatly reduce chances of ingrown hairs (so let's hope I did it correctly), plus it takes off the dry, dead flakes of skin on the top layer of your legs, something that I desperately needed because I've always had very dry legs.

-It removed some of my tan!!! Isn't that weird?? I thought I was going crazy, but then I looked it up, and yup. That's a real thing that happens with waxing. If you're concerned about this, then waxing might not be for you, but I didn't really care, plus some websites that I looked at said that it can actually be a good thing, which does make sense since supposedly there's no such thing as a "healthy tan", and tans can put you at risk for melanoma. Whether or not waxing reduces your chance of melanoma is totally up in the air, but it certainly can't hurt.

-They give you plenty of oil. What they lacked in quantity of wax strips, they made up for in quantity of oil. Actually, they DIDN'T make up for it, because that oil didn't help me finish my legs, thank you very much. But there was definitely more than enough oil. The oil is used to sooth your legs after you wax, and remove any wax that got left on your legs. It did it's job well, and I have pretty much a whole bottle of it left. Which could be nice, especially if my legs feel sensitive over the next few days. I'm pretty resilient and don't have very sensitive skin, so I shouldn't need it, but it's nice to know that I have it if I do.


     Overall, I would say that my experience with waxing so far has been very similar to my experience with airplanes: having tried it once, I can say that it was neither as wonderful nor as terrible as I'd been led to believe. I did find it kind of more fun that shaving (which sounds crazy, I know, since it did come with its fair share of pain). I guess just because the product felt like a lasting accomplishment, as opposed to shaving which feels so pointless and tedious since the hair grows back pretty much instantly. Anyway, I'll try to keep you updated on my continuing waxing journey, and let you know once I've perfected my hair removal methods. Have a good evening!

-VaughnDL