Laser Hair Removal – does it actually work?

“Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature,” she writes. “With a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin, Denis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly nails like a Struwwelpeter …”

– Bridget Jones Diary

Hair. That thing that you tend to get annoyed with when it grows in other places other than your head and a few other selected places.

Despite a few women these days now foregoing hair removal in favour of a more natural look, the majority still worries about out-of-place hair, myself included. I am aware that the desire for smooth skin surfaces on women is a social construct but somehow I can’t avoid preferring a groomed look.

When it comes to hair removal, I must have tried most techniques available in the market: plucking, bleaching, shaving, waxing, IPLing and all sorts of hair removal machines, that have felt more like torture devices than anything else.

I’ve mostly given up on painful hair removal, most of the time they just grow back and all the pain feels kind of worthless. Yes, when you wax it lasts a bit longer than shaving but it’s time consuming, painful and kind of adds up

I purchased a Philips IPL machine a while back and tried it on my legs, underarms and moustache. The problem with the IPL machine was that it was time consuming and it didn’t really work on my underarms or my moustache. On the legs it worked as promised – after a few sessions hair stopped growing but as I added more tattoos to my legs, it kind of became obsolete – if you aren’t aware, you can’t use IPL or laser removal on dark or tattooed skin as it will seriously burn.

When it comes to moustaches, unless you’re a boy or you sing in Twin Twin, whom I dubbed the French LMFAO who sung at Eurovision last year, there is no reason why you should want to have one. Being a Southern European and albeit not being a very dark one, I’ve still been blessed with the curse of the dark haired women: a bit of a mo. It’s never been too bad, only a few hairs here and there, that I bleached and became almost invisible. Apparently it is a normal thing for women to get more hirsute with age, as estrogen levels drop and for that reason, I had noticed that in the last few years it had become a little bit worse.

When I was given the opportunity to get rid of it for good by way of laser hair removal I knew I had to try it. HI went to the City Hair Removal clinic to do four treatments, hoping those would be enough to get rid of my hairy problem. ow does it work, then? Similarly to IPL hair removal, the root has to be in the skin, so it can be targeted by the laser. You get shaved and after putting on eye protection, you get your upper lip zapped by a sharp laser light. I won’t lie to you and say that it doesn’t hurt but it’s bearable. After this, your skin might be a bit red but nothing that a bit of aloe vera gel doesn’t help soothe. I have to say that I have been blessed with not too sensitive skin, so the recovery from the treatment only takes 10 minutes tops. I was very happy to see that my hair stopped re-growing after two treatments, now I am curious to see how long it will last for. I am aware that it might regrow in the future but at least I know I won’t have to worry about it for a while.

Have you tried laser hair treatments? How did it work for you?

*Disclaimer – I received four complimentary sessions at the City Hair Removal clinic, words and opinions are my own.*