Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Are you tired of shaving your vulva? An ad in my Facebook feed for a laser hair removal device recently asked me this question. My answer is No. I’m not tired of shaving my vulva, because I have never once thought to shave it.

How is best to shave one’s vulva, anyway? For women who aren’t gymnasts or acrobats, there’s a significant line-of-sight problem involved. Are you supposed to fly blind? Phone a friend? Arrange a few mirrors just so? I see how this could be a tiring task.

Ahem. Let’s move on.

When it comes to the war against body hair in general, I do the bare minimum. This is partially out of laziness, but partially not. You see, there’s this thing called the spoon theory—it’s a way of describing the limited energy currency a person with chronic illness has each day (here’s a great comic about it). 

Some disabled people use a spoon or two to tend to their physical appearance, because it makes them happy, and that’s great. (Take, for example,

Esmé Weijun Wang

.) I’m just not one of these people. I’d rather stay in pajamas as often as possible, and avoid hair-related maintenance of all sorts. Why waste time plucking my eyebrows, my upper lip, the mole on my chin, or the mole on my forehead that I didn’t even realize I had until it just last week sprouted a hair? Why shave my legs and armpits when I usually wear a flannel shirt and sweatpants? We live in the post-pandemic world now, a world in which people proudly go to the store in pajamas, and it’s about darn time.

Another reason I’m not prone to plucking or pruning is because my life often feels like a big, heavy boulder that I’m constantly rolling up a hill. I spend most of my time, energy, and money (and my husband’s money) fighting migraines, often to the point of complete exhaustion and despair, only for them to eventually return with a vengeance and flatten me. It’s a very Sysiphean existence. Shaving and other repetitive beautification processes are just another boulder I’m pushing up a hill.

You might be wondering how, given my lack of commitment to body hair removal, an ad about vulva maintenance got into my Facebook feed? Let me explain.

Shortly after The Barbie Movie came out, some friends invited me to watch it with them in the theater. I was hesitant at first, because I hated Barbies as a kid (I much preferred Hot Wheels) and wasn’t sure I’d really “get it.” And, for the most part, I didn’t. But I did enjoy the conversation afterward over dinner, because these friends were all a little bit older than me, and they had all encountered more sexism than I have. They told me of male bosses who gave them hugs or called them “baby,” male coworkers being intimidating or coercive, getting passed over for looking too young, and getting passed over for looking too old. Who knew there are so many misogynists in the world??

(Come to think of it, I guess most everyone knew this.)

The conversation eventually turned to the many extra things women need to do to maintain credibility in the workplace, such as wearing makeup and, of course, removing unsightly body hair. At this point, someone mentioned that she used an epilator.

A what-ilator? 

An epilator! It’s a handheld device with a billion tiny tweezers on a spinning, whirring head. You run it over your legs, or your face, or wherever, then each of the little tweezers grabs onto one of your hairs and PULLS it straight out of your skin!

I don’t know about you, but I have experienced enough pain in my life up to this point, so the act of epilation (or depilation, technically) didn’t seem appealing at first.

But my friend went on to say that when you epilate, the hair grows back more slowly, and it’s softer and lighter each time. Eventually, she claimed, you’ll barely have to epilate at all. This was, from the sound of it, the most anti-Sysiphean body hair removal mechanism in existence.

I bought my epilator online, hence the onslaught of Facebook ads for hair removal products. I was looking forward to the feeling of making noticeable, lasting progress on something, even if that something was my hairy legs. It promised to be a fulfilling endeavor.

My first few epi-sessions were downright terrifying, as the device itself whirs loudly and the tweezers roll past in a blur. As my (extremely long) thigh hairs were torn from my skin, leaving behind red, swollen pores, I wondered who in the world thought this was a good idea. (The answer: Two Israeli men who had their wives test the early prototypes. A later article describes one of the inventors testing the devices on his own legs. This is telling.)

But as I kept epilating, I realized one thing I didn’t account for in taking up this new hobby: the friend who suggested epilating is Asian, and, therefore, likely has less leg hair than me (being a white person). 

There have also been some unexpected difficulties: the divot right below the knee, for example. It’s downright impossible to epilate. Also, my right leg is much more sensitive to the sensation violent hair removal, so there’s likely an imbalance developing.

I’ve epilated over a dozen times now, and can confidently say hair is getting pulled, and yet, my legs still look like the front lawn of a haunted house. I also don’t have enough spoons to do it very often, so epilation is, currently, a more painful and less immediately effective alternative to shaving. 

Will I ever reach a state of epilated bliss? Or is this boulder of body hair going to eventually come crashing back down the hill? I have, at least, gotten used to the painful feeling of uprooting my leg hair. I haven’t tried epilating any…other areas.

Does anyone know of a way to make menopause come sooner? I’ve heard it helps with both migraines and body hair, so for a non-Asian like me, it might be the only hope for either of them.

Share Your Thoughts…

1. What is your preferred method of body hair removal?

2. What’s the longest you’ve gone without shaving/waxing/epilating/etc?

3. For all the menopausal or post-menopausal women out there…is there hope for body hair??

4. For all the men who have read this far: Bravo! Have you considered beardepilation? Why or why not?

5. Now that you’ve read this post, are you getting social media ads for hair removal products? (Example below.)

Let’s make this post a comprehensive source of body hair removal knowledge! Leave me a comment to join the conversation, or reply to the email. I do my best to respond to everyone.

Proof that this actually happened.