I hate shaving. It is the bane of my existence.
Every single time I get in the shower I have to use positive self-talk to make myself shave.
“When you get dressed and want to wear shorts you will wish you had shaved.”
“It’s not that hard, it only takes a few minutes.”
“Come on! You can do it!”
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I needed a shaving alternative.
This past May I decided to make a change. I decided to try waxing my legs, armpits and bikini area.
This wasn’t my first experience with ripping hair out of my legs. I bought an epilator in college and would cry while it slowly ripped hair out of my legs, one at a time. Then they all grew back as ingrown hairs. I soon gave up that attempt at hair removal.
Of course I hear that laser hair removal is the way to go but it is expensive and not in the budget.
Which led me to waxing.
First, I decided to do it myself.
I grabbed a wax kit off Amazon for super cheap – I know you would expect nothing less from me – and attempted to do it myself. Luke was gone for a few days for work so I figured I could wax at night after the kids were asleep so I wouldn’t be bothered. I watched YouTube videos on waxing. I made sure I had all the things I would need. I took pics to share on my blog. I was prepared. I was pumped. This could totally work and I would never have to shave again!
I worked for 2-3 hours the first night. I turned on a Hallmark movie, applied wax, drank wine to help with the pain (it didn’t help) and ripped my own hair out. Over and over. Ya’ll. As you can imagine this was not a pleasant experience. Plus, at the end of the evening when it was time to go to bed I had only done a small portion of 1 leg. I had so much left to do.
But I was determined.
So the next night, Luke was still out of town, and why would I want to be productive with my free time like read a book, work on my blog, clean the house, or just rest and do nothing? Instead, I chose to continue to inflict pain on myself. Over and over. I honestly can’t remember if I got up to my knee on one leg or two. It was a time in my life I am fine with forgetting. It took forever, not only because I had to rip small sections at a time due to the pain, but because my brain knew what was coming and I would have to pause, take deep breaths, and force myself to rip off the wax.
I also tried to do my own armpits. One side went well… the other hurt like heck and didn’t take the hair off.
It was awful.
Even when I was “done” with half a leg there were still little hairs everywhere that I had missed. And I had one armpit done and one not done. It was such a mess. I was tired. I’d spent like 6 hours on half of a leg so far (maybe I had 2 halves done… I can’t remember…). It was miserable. And it hurt afterwards, too!
The Saga continues… Professionally
So, instead of giving up completely, I decided to pay someone else to inflict the same pain on me. They wouldn’t have to pause and breathe, they could just rip it out without fear of pain! Great idea!
I made an appointment with the European Wax Center (because I needed this done NOW before I backed out and all the local gals I contacted didn’t have time in their schedule for weeks). Get your first wax at the European Wax Center free through my link!
I showed up at my appointment with a knot in my stomach.
It took about an hour for them to painfully rip all of the hair out of my legs and armpits. They even had to go back over what I’d already done. I had to hold onto a stress ball to keep from screaming. The warm wax going on was actually quite soothing. Except that then I knew it had to come right back off. The gal who helped me did a great job. Kept it light. Worked quickly. Laughed a little at how awful it was that she was causing me so much pain.
I left in pain, but confident that I could handle that much pain once a month to never have to shave again. It was intense, but then it was over. The pain went away much more quickly than when I did it myself. I felt so free.
Oh, it’s not over yet!
When I got home I realized that there were still quite a few hairs that needed plucked. So for the next 2 days I spent a ton of time tweezing out individual hairs to keep all my hair on the same growth schedule = more time spent. (My fave tweezers can be found here!)
Then, my hair started to grow back within a week. I’m not sure if my hair just grows really fast or if maybe a lot of it broke off instead of actually being pulled out at the root?
I was self-conscious about the hair on my legs for about 3 weeks before my next appointment. I didn’t shave to make sure I didn’t mess anything up, but it wasn’t pleasant. I found out much later that I could have gone back within 5 days for a free touch up, but no one told me that at the beginning.
I absolutely could have stopped here, but I didn’t. I was determined to see this through. So at 4 weeks I went back for my next appointment and went through it all again. Comforting warm wax on, painful to the point of screaming ripping it off a few seconds later.
My hair is really dark and it doesn’t like to be removed. It likes to stay with me. That’s where it’s happiest. So soon my hair started growing back in as ingrown hairs again. Just like when I’d used the epilator in college. I researched how to exfoliate and I exfoliated like I’d never exfoliated before (I used a similar exfoliating mitt to this). I even purchased a few products from the waxing salon to prevent ingrown hairs but it didn’t help. So, now I was paying to have someone cause me pain, paying for products to prevent ingrown hairs, and then going home and spending a ton of time tweezing.
Somehow, all of this seemed like a better solution to me than shaving every day. Did I tell you how much I hate shaving?
I asked my husband if I could purchase a bundle of waxing appointments to save money. I was all in. He was on board if I was happy… but…
He stopped me and looked at me one day and said, “Chandler, is this really what you want? Do you want to be spending all this time and worry on something that is not working?”
And I realized he was right! Somehow, due to my hatred of shaving, I’d told myself that this was better.
But it wasn’t. It was expensive. It was painful. It was time consuming. And it wasn’t working for my hair type. I had been stressing much more over whether or not to keep waxing and how to make it work than I ever did about shaving. At least I only stressed about shaving while in the shower.
And now…
It’s been about 3 months since my last waxing appointment. I’ve actually had Luke wax my armpits at home a couple of times to see if we could keep up with that. And I wax my own feet and toes (who needs hair there… really… where did it come from?!). But that’s it. I’m still dealing with ingrown hairs all over my legs and still exfoliating like a mad person to fix it.
Will I ever wax again? Sure. It actually works really well for my armpits (when someone else does it!), inner thighs and bikini area, but other than that, nope. It was not the right hair removal for me for my legs. Maybe someday I’ll try laser hair removal, but today is not that day. Until then I’m trading back and forth between using this razor which is soooo easy to use since it’s all in one step, and this shaving gel + razor. Make sure to follow me on Facebook to find out when they’re on sale! Because that’s the only way I buy them!
Thanks for reading! If you have had any interesting experiences waxing I’d love to hear them!
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