Leg Hair

You (my readers) and I have become this close. Our relationship has progressed this much. I feel so comfortable with you that it has come to me blogging about leg hair.

I hate it.

I can deal with most other kinds of body hair (my own…with others it’s different). Well, not armpit hair. I hate that too. And I have a sort of love-hate relationship with a lone hair that comes out of my neck. I love pulling on it. It has a soothing effect on me. But I can’t stand how it looks so I never leave it in very long. Other kinds of my own body hair I can live with. Well, as I age my eyebrows are becoming bushier. I don’t like that either. But other than all those different kinds of body hair, I’m fine with body hair EXCEPT for leg hair.

Leg hair on women is UGLY. Yesterday I made the mistake of wearing pants that have a tendency to crawl slightly up the leg when I sit down. Every single time I sat down in the presence of people I was intensely aware of my long, coarse, black leg hairs slithering down beyond the bottom of my pants, calling out to everyone in the room, “Look at me….look at me.” It was as scary as it sounds.

You might ask me, “Nadia, why don’t you just remove them if they disturb you so much?” And I will grant you that is a very good question. But it will mean that you don’t know me as much as I thought you did.

I am a firm believer in waxing. Waxing, in my opinion, is the only proper and lady-like way to remove body hair (except for facial hair, which requires threading and tweezers). But to wax, your body hair needs to reach a certain length for it to actually work. Waxing does nothing for stubby hair, for example. NOTHING. If you shaved a couple of days ago and you have tiny little black dots of hair peeping out from behind your skin, waxing will have absolutely no effect on it. If you wait for a few more days and your leg hair now stands erect giving its salutations to every passer by, waxing may remove a little bit of the hair but the rest will remain as is.

No. Waxing only really works if you have a practical rain forest growing on your legs.

And waxing takes SO LONG. A full body wax takes about two hours of dedicated pulling and stickiness. It’s hard work!

But when you’re done…man oh man oh man. Your skin is so nice and smooth and clean and shiny. It really is worth the trouble. And you can wait a full two weeks before your leg hairs begin growing back.

But why waxing and not one of the many other methods of hair removal?

Well, I used to shave when I was a teenager and in college and I was absolutely content with it. Until one of my college friends told me that only belly dancers shaved, implying that it was an impure way to remove hair. Even though my head knows that’s an absolute load of crap, I haven’t been able to make myself shave ever since. That and because I hate that it needs to be done daily and I hate what the hairs look like when they begin to grow back. And no matter what, shaven legs are just never as silky smooth as waxed legs are.

What about hair removal creams? Another friend of mine in college told me that they cause cancer (didn’t I have great friends?). Since then, I haven’t ever been able to make myself use them. And again, they don’t last as long as waxing, they smell horrible, they clog up the drains, and the hairs grow back all weird.

Then there’s the epilators. Those are just pure painful, their effect doesn’t last much longer than the hair removal creams and they cause tons of in-grown hairs. Try to remove those, why don’t you!

No. Waxing is the only proper way to remove leg hair. But then it means that you spend two weeks of any month looking great and two other weeks of the same month looking like an ape as you wait for your leg hairs to grow long enough for you to wax them away again.

I can’t believe that in 2012 we STILL haven’t figured out a way to permanently kill hair follicles on a certain part of the body without it being an extremely expensive process. If I was a multi-millionaire, I’d laser off all my body hair. But I’m not. Even if I was, how on EARTH would I find the time for those long multiple sessions you have to go through?

Am I doing something wrong? Am I amiss in the feminine world of hair removal? Are there ways for a woman to look like a woman ALL the time instead of half of the time?

Just in case you are wondering, I am writing this post with silky smooth skin. No leg hair….for the time-being anyways.