Sugaring

I’m blessed with lots and lots of dark, thick, coarse, wavy, curly hair.

Yeah, and the mane on my head isn’t half bad either.

Seriously though, being a hairy kind of gal can be a mixed bag.

I just signed the kids up for swimming lessons, and bought a pool pass. There will be swimming, maybe a trip to the beach, not to mention the everyday shorts and skirts of summer.

photo credit: Oneras [what about peace?]

I spend the first weeks of summer trying to figure out how to deal with it. If I were blonde and had thinner hair, I would probably just go au naturel.

But I’m not that crunchy.

If I were stranded on some deserted island, I would find a sharp flinty rock to take care of business. Now when it comes to pit hair? I don’t mind that a bit. But unfortunately, I live in the United States.

If a woman as hot as Madonna can disgust an entire nation with a little pit hair, who am I to try to rock the cultural expectations of beauty boat?

When I heard about sugaring, I was immediately intrigued.

Firstly, the ingredients are all natural – sugar, lemon juice, water – you can even make up a batch of the stuff yourself. Google for recipes, there are several on the internet.

Similar to waxing, you are basically applying a sticky substance to your skin, pressing it down with linen cloth strips, and ripping in the other direction. You first apply the sugaring wax with this little plastic thingie Then you apply the cloth strip on top, and rub it 3 or 4 times in the direction of hair growth. Then, holding the skin taut with your other hand, you quickly pull the strip back quickly as close to the skin as possible in the opposite direction of hair growth.

I had also heard that sugaring was less painful than waxing, which was a huge plus in my mind.

Traditional waxing makes you want to slap your mama for being more Italian than native American.

I went to the drug store and bought a NADS Sugaring Kit. It cost me around $19, making it more pricey than other “waxing” products.

It certainly WAS far less painful than traditional waxing.

My complaint with this product is that there are far too few cloth strips. You CAN wash and reuse them, which makes this a pretty eco-friendly hair removal product, as well as recycle the plastic tub the wax comes in.

I also didn’t know until I was nearly done that you can continue using the same strip over and over until it no longer picks up any hair. Even when it’s all gooped up with sugaring wax. This makes it a little tougher to smooth it on your leg, but I found that I could use each one two or three times and it was still effective.

I have washed all the strips and dried them about 3 times now and they still work great.

The thing that’s great about waxing/sugaring is that the hair tends to grow back more sparse and thin.

If you keep it up, you’ll find that you have to do it less and less. So even if you go back to shaving or whatever, you can go longer inbetween hair removal sessions.

Of course, it’s more work and time spent up front. If you’re looking to save time, waxing may or may not actually be a time savings.

Sugaring also doesn’t seem to remove as much of the finer, thinner hairs as waxing.

In fact, I called around to several Atlanta spas to see if any of them offered sugaring. I had to call 5 or 6 before I found one that even offered it. And when I spoke with the aesthetician, she seemed very unenthusiastic about sugaring. She told me that she isn’t that pleased with the results, and often has to use a bit of regular wax after the sugaring process in order to get all of the hair. I asked her if the clients seemed happy with the results, and she reported that they did – so that seemed to be the key thing to me.

I’m not THAT picky. I don’t have to get every single last hair, as long as I don’t look like a hairy beast I’m ok. Nobody is going over my legs with a magnifying glass. And it’s not like there is a man feeling me up. (Besides, the last time I was actually having sex, if memory serves, my ex-husband couldn’t have cared less about a little stray hair or fuzz.)

And since shaving exfoliates your legs, you have to remember to exfoliate on a regular basis when you do sugaring or waxing, otherwise you’ll get ashy.

Overall I like the sugaring kit and intend on buying it again. Amazon’s prices are better than the drug store prices.

I did notice that in addition to less pain, the sugaring didn’t make my legs all red, angry and screaming at me.

Here are a couple of tips to make sugaring work better:

• Wash your legs (or wherever you’ll be sugaring) with soap and water, rinse thoroughly and dry well. Your legs need to be very clean and dry for the sugar to grip the hair properly.
• Warm the wax first by placing the closed tub in a pan of hot water. You don’t want it thin and runny, but it’s much easier to spread and there’s less waste if you melt it a bit.
• Even though sugaring is less painful than waxing, it’s still pulling hair out at the root and hurts a little. Don’t wax or sugar right before your period when your body is more sensitive to pain. If you’re really sensitive, you might want to take a pain reliever half an hour before you start sugaring. Me? I sometimes drink a beer before I do it.
• Make sure the hair is long enough before you start. This is one of the hardest parts! It should be about half a centimeter long, at least.
• After sugaring, rinse the area with cool water to remove the last bits of sugar. Cold water can feel really nice too.

So.

What do YOU do for hair removal?