Safe and natural at-home hair removal

Image taken from www.PlanktonSkincare.com.

One night, several years ago, I was sitting in the back seat of a friend’s car driving through North Beach.  I looked up at the store fronts and realized something.  The stores on the street went in a weird order: restaurant, waxing, restaurant, electrolysis, restaurant, full-service salon.  I turned to my friends in the car and asked if anyone else had noticed the pattern.  Everyone said no except the driver, who readjusted her rearview mirror to see me and said, “Us Italians are always hairy and always hungry.  It ain’t exactly a coincidence [the store fronts] are like that.  I have an aunt and an uncle we can only tell apart by the thickness of their mustaches.”

For those of us like my friend in the driver’s seat that night [and apparently, some of her family members] who need a little help with maintaining lady-like levels of body hair, I’ve compiled a couple at-home tips to help you keep things under control and under budget.  Because there’s no use wasting a ton of money at a salon if you’re too broke to go out and show off your beautiful self later that night.

Peach Fuzz [like on cheeks and the upper lip]
While it sounds cute, if you have dark hair, peach fuzz can be anything but.  One trick to help tone down the fine hair on your body is by following a natural bleaching routine.  Fine hair can be easily bleached by using fresh lemon juice, which is obviously harmless enough that you can use it on a regular [or even daily, if you feel it‘s necessary] basis.  Apply fresh lemon juice to the skin either by rubbing a sliced lemon on the area with the peach fuzz or by soaking a piece of paper towel in freshly-squeezed lemon juice, then leaving on the fuzzy area for about five minutes.  Then finish with the rest of your normal routine, making sure to apply a skin cream with an SPF.  [Some people have reported an increased risk of brighter sunburns or darker tans on the area the lemon juice was applied to, so be careful.]

Thicker Hair [like on legs and eyebrows]
For those with problems with thicker hair, there’s another natural hair removal method call sugaring, which can be extremely helpful in the ridding of unwanted hair.  Sugaring is like using a natural wax-like substance made of lemon juice, sugar, and water that pulls the unwanted hair out at the root and removes it completely.  Depending on the source of your recipe, however, the process for preparing the sugaring mix even before removing any hair could take several hours [the solution has to be heated and then cooled].  It’s highly effective, but can be much more time-consuming, so be sure to note that this is not something you would want to try and start before a hot date.  In that case, shave or wear pants.  You’ll be much better off than trying to figure out sugaring when you have other things going on that same day.  [Otherwise, you might be forced to wear pants anyway when you don’t pay attention to the directions or go off-course and end up with a big streak of sugaring mix glued to your shin.]

And if any of you have more tips you’d like to share with the rest of us, please send them in to me at: LaurenSeverance@yahoo.com.  You never know, your tips might become their own little article!