Epilators - grit your teeth and buy one - they're great!

by Smoov

In my quest for long term smooth legs I have previously tried wax strips, which made my legs red, blotchy and lumpy, and didn't work too well either, I thought. I also found the strips fiddly to handle, and messy. I find shaving with a good quality multi-blade razor is very effective but I often nick myself unless I am very careful, and the stubble invariably re-appears within 48 hours.

So it was that I decided to invest in an epilator. Having read all the reviews left by buyers I decided to plump for the fairly top-of-the-range Braun Silk-épil X'elle 5580, which I bought online with a saving of £10 on the high street price. There are cheaper epilators than this one available, but my research led me to conclude that Braun was the name to go for.

This epilator comes with 3 different heads - a 'beginner' head with a small number of 'tweezers', a 'regular' head, and a narrow head for epilating facial hairs.
As well as the 3 heads the epilator also has 2 speeds, a seperate, optional attachment to 'massage' the skin area and raise the hairs, and a light designed to highlight hairs in the path of the epilator. The light seemed to be quite effective.

Also included is a gel pack, (and 'glove' to hold the gel pack in place during use) that you should cool in a freezer for 2 hours prior to use. The cold gel pack is supposed to ease irritation, but I thought conventional wisdom had it that the hair follicles should be warmed first to allow them to expand and release the hair strand more easily.I suspect that the cold gel pack is really supposed to help reduce the discomfort that can be caused by epilating, but if it also constricts the follicles then I can only imagine that it will be more likely to increase irritation. I'm not a skin expert so I don't know, though.

As with waxing, the epilator works at it's best on hairs 2-5mm in length. I hadn't shaved for a few days prior to using it, and so my leg hair was the perfect length for the trial.
For my first trial I started with the beginner head but soon realised that it would take a very long time to epilate my legs with it. I suppose the beginner head may reduce discomfort and irritation by only pulling a small amount of hairs out of a patch of leg in one pass, but as the object is to remove all hairs it necessitates several passes over the same patch of skin. Patience not being one of my virtues, I soon discarded the beginner head and clipped on the 'regular' head.

I began with my shins, and found the epilator with regular head to be very effective at removing hairs, and relatively comfortable. Epilating my calves was a somewhat different matter. Whether the hair on my calves was more dense, or more deeply rooted, the fact is that it WAS more uncomfortable. Not unbearable by any means, especially if you take it slowly, but you DO feel it.

To epilate my thighs, which are, unfortunately, very sensitive to any kind of hair removal, I started using the gel pack. The plan is to hold the gel pack onto an area of skin for 30 seconds and then epilate immediately. Even using the gel pack I found epilating my thighs was a fairly uncomfortable experience this time round. Plenty of solidly rooted hairs!

Unlike waxing, in which a fairly large area is depilated in one painful instant, epilating is a much more protracted experience. If several hairs are being tweezed out of a small area in an instant you are going to feel it, but you can control the speed at which this happens, or stop if you have to. The useful thing about feeling the hairs coming out is that you can epilate an area you can't see (such as behind your knees) and be fairly certain you've got all the hairs - when you can't feel any more hairs being pulled out the job is done!

My very sensitive skin didn't take kindly to the shock of epilating. 20 minutes after I was finished my legs looked like I had spent a happy hour running through waist-high stinging nettles with nothing but Speedos on! They felt hot, were really quite red, and practically every hair follicle had turned into a small bump. It wasn't pretty. I was expecting this, however. After my experience with wax strips my legs were red and blotchy for several days. After several applications of cold moisturising cream and a night's rest, though, my legs were no longer bumpy, but still a bit red. They're fine now though - in fact, 2 days on and they are as good as I've seen them in a long time. I am starting to feel a smattering of hair growth on my legs again, but these are only the hairs that were too short to epilate 2 days ago. I'll zap them in a few days time and then expect to be smooth for 2-3 weeks. It sure beats shaving every 2 days!

CONCLUSION
You might think from this review that I'd be reluctant to use my epilator again, probably. Not so, though.
I really hate the stubble that creeps back shortly after a shave so I have no real choice other than to yank the hairs out, and I much prefer epilating to waxing.
I am confident that the more I use the epilator the easier and more comfortable it will be. It's definitely the way forward for me!

PROS
Effective, quick, long lasting hair removal
No messy, sticky wax to deal with
No more expensive 3-blade shaving heads and shaving gels
Good way of effectively depilating areas you can't see

CONS
Initial outlay
Can be uncomfortable
Possible skin irritation

My score: 8 out of 10