Hi, you're hairy too!

I found out who on my team at work was interested in the No!No! in April (see post).  I figured the topic would come up again eventually, or that maybe I’d notice some body hair on one of them.  But to tell you the truth, on the average day, I’d forget about it.  I never really looked.  So if one of my colleagues hadn’t asked me to untangle her necklace for her while she was wearing it, I never would have known for sure. 

I thought I’d seen a few hairs on her chin once before, but it was a passing glance as she sat next to me and I didn’t want to look again in case she noticed and felt self conscious.  But yesterday, because I had to keep my eyes on what I was doing (that chain was really tangled!) I could clearly see the combination of both coarse dark and coarse light hairs on her chin.  They were several days long, but blunt like they were usually cut. 

Finding someone else who might know what you’re going through is very exciting.  But then I wondered, does she?  She might have a more serious condition than I do.  She might have an even harder time with the situation than I do.  She’s much older than I, and is of an ethnicity to which such things are a little more common.  Her chin might be the only place she has it.  She might not be bothered by it nearly as much.  Would it be callous of me to just hop on the subject with a thrilled exclamation of, “Hey!  You have hair on your chin!  Me too!”?

I know I’d be unnerved, if it were me.  But then I’d be relieved and happy to have someone to talk to.  I might not even mind if it happened in front of the rest of the team.   But I cannot make that call for someone else.  There may be an opportunity to jump into a conversation about hair removal sometime in the future, since there’ve already been a couple.

"Tweezed" The Sequel

I kept up the plucking for almost two weeks.  First of all, I have to say that wearing my peach fuzz for the first time in a long time was a constant challenge.  I actually felt the need to wear my hair down all the time to hide it a bit.  But that alone wouldn’t have induced me to go back to shaving.

What did make me say to myself, “Self, it’s time to take out that razor again,” was when the ingrown hairs and soreness eventually got as bad as when I shave nonstop for weeks on end.  That surprised me, but all that yanking on the hairs, accidentally catching skin, hairs breaking off instead of coming out at the root and getting stuck under the skin... it got ugly.  I am still trying to heal from all the ugly.

So I’m back to shaving.  My hair removal regimen is down to ten minutes again.  All is right with the world.  Well, it will be once this big blemish on my chin heals over.

Tweezed

Shaving has been my preferred method of facial hair removal for, oh... quickly and sloppily doing the math in my head... seven years, at least.  That’s a long time to do something you don’t like, and almost every morning to boot.  Even taking days off shaving when I can, it gets tiring.  And lately, as I’ve been thinking more and more seriously about laser hair re-removal, I’ve been fantasizing about waking up and having no hair to remove way more than usual.

So last weekend, I needed a longer break from shaving.  I got prickly, then stubbly, and by the third day, downright beardy.  And as I thought about going back to work the next day and dreading the shaving, I just felt extraordinarily weary.  And as I had little else to do that day, I sat on the counter in my bathroom after a shower and took out the tweezers.

Two and a half hours later, I was very sore and my chin and jaw were beet red.  I couldn’t even remember the last time I had stared down every dark hair I could find on my face and then ripped it out.  It hurt more than I remembered, and it gave me such a feeling of futility.  For the whole two-and-a-half hours I was thinking, “Damn, that’s so much hair!  And it’s only half of what I used to have!”  It was a real downer.

But as the stinging and redness receded, I glanced in the mirror a few more times in passing, and it felt nice to see that I was beardless without the shaving, and would likely be in the same state the next day.  And I was, except for a few missed hairs that I caught by the morning light, and a handful that broke off rather than came out by the root.  And so I didn't shave before going to work.  Or the day after that.  Or the day after that. 

What I find pretty funny is that I am now having to get used to having blond hair on my face again!  It’s mostly normal vellus hair that everyone has, with a scattering of coarse blond ones that I am trying not to pluck, but it’s weird to me!  I’ve shaved it all for so long that I’m more used to lumpy-nicked-ingrown-hair skin than smooth-healing-blond-furred skin.  It’s been really interesting.

It certainly would not be practical to keep this up, time-wise, which I already knew.  I used to pluck in the eleventh grade when I had much much less facial hair.  And I cannot see how ripping and tugging on so many hair follicles so often could be good for your skin.  But I haven’t shaved in five days now, and it’s been great.  The longer break has been good.  But gosh, I can still think of so many things I could have been doing for those two-and-a-half hours!

Product: Olay Smooth Finish Facial Hair Removal Duo (Fine to Medium)

To be honest, it’s just kinda nice to see a facial hair removal commercial air pretty regularly on mainstream TV channels.  My guess is that it features models who probably never have to actually use the product, and who are being shot with the perfect lighting and filters to make them look even smoother than the most “hairless” human being would normally look, but...  Eh, I was curious.  And because I was curious, I figured I wouldn’t be the only hirsute girl who was.

Of course, a few weeks after I purchased the box, the version for “medium to coarse hair” began to appear on shelves.  Awesome.  Now I have to shell out another $25.

I was thrilled, though, to go to their website and see they make an effort to educate visitors about hair.  (They state that the saying that hair will grow back thicker and darker after it is removed is myth!  YES!  FINALLY!)


Olay Smooth Finish Facial Hair Removal Duo (Fine to Medium Hair)
Skin Guarding Balm - 1.9g
Hair Removal Cream - 19g

Ingredients:

•     Skin Guarding Balm:  Sucrose Polycottoseedate, Brassica Campestris, Ozokerite, Beeswax, Propylparaben, Ethylene Brassylate, Tocopherol, Propyl Gallate, Tocopheryl Acetate.

•     Hair Removal Cream:  Water, Mineral Oil, Cetearyl Alcohol, Calcium Thioglycolate, Calcium Hydroxide, Ceteareth-20, Sodium Hydroxide, Fragrance, Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice.

Things I liked:

•    When I followed the instructions to spread the balm out farther than where I planning to apply the hair removal cream, and don’t leave it on longer than specified, I did not get the dreaded aura of redness that I’ve had from every other depilatory cream ever.

•      It slaughtered my peach fuzz mustache.

Things I didn't like:

•     My peach fuzz mustache was all it slaughtered.  Like the little green rectangle on the box says, it can’t handle much more than that.

•     It smells like chemical depilitories always smell.  It also tingles like chemical depilitories always tingle.  (Put that balm on first!)

•     You are told not to use it more frequently than every three days.  This is impractical for women who are so hirsute they need to remove dark, secret-telling hair every morning, or every morning and afternoon.

•    The price is not ideal, for what they estimate to be up to twelve uses (probably working off of the area above your lip, which is what they always show in their commercials)

Did it do what it promised?

According to the box:  “Works together to gently remove facial hair for skin that is beautifully soft, smooth and visibly hair-free.”  Well, the Skin Guarding Balm (which feels like you’re rubbing chapstick on your face, by the way) is pretty cool, because it protects your skin from the immediate redness, and though I would have expected this to prevent the hair from behind dissolved away right at the skin’s surface (leaving stubble), I was really impressed by the hairlessness of my upper lip.

But I don’t need a hairless upper lip.  That hair is light and thin and not really a concern.  I need something to remove the dark coarse bristles on my chin and jaw.  So it’s not the product for me, and probably for a lot of you.  But now that I know I can get the “Medium to Coarse Hair” version, that’ll be a more practical product to evaluate.



See what other people thought of Olay Smooth Finish Facial Hair Removal Duo (Fine to Medium):

my cosmetic bag 
Olay Customer Reviews 
MakeupAlley
Ulta Beauty 

And a really cute video review by ShawneePoo:

Hee hee, I want to be her friend.  I’m going to go watch more of her reviews now.