From Head To Toe: April 2010

, by Jen

In eyeliner, product review

Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencils Collection

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, by Jen

In Hannah, Makeup Tutorial

Purple Copper Tutorial Video with Hannah

36Comments

, by Jen

In epilators, hair

Epilators: Friend or Foe? ;)

As women, we all deal with a little something called hair. From styling the hair on our heads, to tweezing our eyebrows, to shaving, waxing, threading, springing, ripping, and sanding, we are in a constant struggle to define how the hair on our bodies look.

Now I'm going to be honest. I probably have less body hair than the average person. I don't need to shave my legs since the hair there is basically very fine and nonexistent. I likewise don't have a ton of underarm hair (I know, gross, TMI right?) but since my skin is so sensitive if I tried to shave the few hairs I did have I would get razor burn and ingrown hairs. Anyone who has done this to their armpits knows what I am talking about! Very unpleasant in an already sensitive area! Maybe I just don't have those mad shaving skills that girls who shave their legs everyday honed, but I was reduced to tweezing the hairs with tweezers which gave me headaches from trying to stare at my own armpit. Yeah, just picture that. O_O

So this comes to the topic of discussion: Epilators. I had first heard about epilators from the ever-savvy Soompi Forums crowd. An epilator is an electronic device much like an electric razor except that instead of cutting your hair, it has little tweezers that pull your hair out. It sounds really scary, right? But I figured, I'm already tweezing my 'pit hairs so might as well let a machine do it for me.

The two epilator brands that kept popping up in terms of quality and popularity were Emjoi and Braun.

Both of these epilators run for around $65 on Amazon.com.

Being that I didn't want to slam such a large amount of money down on a glorified tweezer before trying it, I decided to first buy a cheapo epilator from Big Lots. This is the Panasonic Wet/Dry epilator that runs on AAA batteries and was under $20.

Do I recommend this epilator? Not really. I never wanted to get it wet since I was worried that the batteries inside would get wet. Also, wouldn't it be harder to catch the hairs if it was wet? I don't know, maybe that's just in my head. I would store this in a basket on my bathroom counter and sometimes I'd find that the batteries had popped themselves out, as if they were that scared of the epilator itself too. It did remove hairs though, no complaints about that, but it drained batteries, was quite loud, and I didn't even use it very often. The metal guard also wasn't much protection for my skin since I did experience a pinch or two.

I did like how quickly the hairs would be removed though and I didn't have problems with the pain tolerance so at this point I decided that an upgrade would be well worth the money. I'd already been researching the aforementioned Braun Silk-Epil and the various Emjoi epilators when *trumpets sound* my new BFF Hautelook decided to feature Emjoi in one of their sales.

After some research I decided that the Emjoi Optimini (List price: $59.99, Amazon price: $49.99) would be just what I needed. It's smaller than the full-sized counterparts so it would fit in my underarm area without a problem, PLUS it's corded so I don't have those annoying weakening battery problems. (Weak batteries make for not the happiest tweezing experience, FYI.) It actually fits right in the palm of my hand.

The two sides spin in opposite directions so the skin is pulled taught and isn't punched from bunching, plus there is a metal bar in the middle for the same reason. The ends of the tweezers are actually rounded, not sharp like eyebrow tweezers. The best part? This thing is FAST! It only takes about 20 seconds to have totally smooth underarms with no razor burn, no shaving cream, and no ingrown hairs. There are two speeds but I've found that the fast speed is actually less painful for me, and the pain in general is an amount that is quite tolerable. Loud little thing, but it's sooo nice to have. I do recommend exfoliating your underarms beforehand (I use a bath brush while in the shower) to assure no ingrowns, and I've had no problems.

The reason I decided to bring this all up is because I bought this epilator last time and I've been looooving it! I checked Hautelook today and Emjoi is actually up on there right now so I hurried to make a post recommending it before it's too late! The Optimini that I have is on sale for $41.97 and they have a lot of the beefier epilators for those who want to use it on their legs as well. As of my post, there are 36 hours left in the sale.

If you aren't already signed up with Hautelook you can sign up with my link here:

http://www.hautelook.com/invite/836240

The inviter does get a hautelook credit after the invitee's first purchase but I do only post about products I bought myself and recommend. I'm not compensated or affiliated with Hautelook in any way, but I do love their sales. ;)

Oh, and I didn't want to forget to mention that Urban Decay is also having another sale on Hautelook starting tomorrow, Tuesday April 20th at 8AM PT (10AM for me here in Central Time). I really don't even need to say how much I love this brand, right? Pretty sure there's something Urban Decay in all of my videos. XD

So anyway, whether you decide to jump on these Emjois or invest in the Braun Silk-Epil or any other number of epilators, I do hope you can try one sometime and be happy and hair-free. They aren't as scary as they seem! Let me know in the comments, have you tried an epilator and if so, which one? Have you tried tweezing unconventional areas? I want to hear some hair-horror stories. ;D

Hehehe.