Using Something Other Than An Epilator - Ears, Nose And Lashes
Now that we‘ve got the scariest thing out of the way (because tweezing the scalp hurts), we‘ve still got more to cover, because there are other areas on my head where hair can grow.
I had a phase where I experimented a lot with hot wax, mostly on my scalp. In the end, I found it nearly impossible to make it work on the back of my head. With a helping hand that would have been different, I suppose, but on my own there was just no way I could manage to apply the wax evenly there. Which is why the results left a lot to be desired, and things ended also in a bit of a mess quite easily. There are still wax spots all over my bathroom that can testify to that.
However, it turned out that I could still make very good use of the equipment I had bought for that purpose, because hot wax turned out to be ideal for two areas that tend to get very hairy once you get a little older.
The first one are the ears. Applying the wax with a wood spatula on and even just slightly in my ears was no problem at all (I guess you would have assumed that much), plus ripping it off proved to be very bearable as far as the pain level is concerned, and also rather effective. I do the ears once a week now; unfortunately, there is no reduced regrowth that I would have noticed, but the now smooth ears look so much better than they did in the days when I only trimmed the hair on them.
The nose belongs to the same *gets hairier with age* category and, here again, getting the wax in there even without blocking the airflow (again with a spatula) was not an issue. Unlike the ears though, in the beginning I found it to be rather painful to rip the wax out again. I knew that was likely to be the case since most of my efforts of plucking individual hairs from in there ended with my eyes tearing up in an instant. If my memory serves me well, it did feel a little easier to rip them out at the same time using wax.
Again, I follow that procedure once a week and find that it makes a huge difference that not only no hair sticks out of the nostrils, but there is equally none to be seen when you get a glimpse inside there.
But let‘s move on to something way more interesting than hairy ears and nostrils - the lashes. The first time I ended up removing them was when I had just shaved off my eyebrows for the very first time. Mostly out of curiosity, I tried to use my wet shaver even below the brows and ended up doing some downward passes over my eyelids, not thinking much of it (I had enough on my mind with the eyebrow situation…).
The next morning, to my surprise, I noticed that on one eye I had managed to shave off a big chunk of the lashes. That in turn lead me to take my shaver and try to get rid of all of them. It also seemed necessary to even out the mess I had created.
The downward passes were very effective for the longer, upper lashes. But for the shorter, lower ones, I had to change direction and go upwards, slightly lifting the eyelid with every single attempt. That was a lot scarier than the other way round, though it worked and I never hurt myself. Still, I wanted to find another way.
(Me in 2018, just minutes after the very first time I shaved of my lashes with my Gillette shaver. There is some irritation around the eyes due to all the upward passes I needed to do to get all of the lower lashes.)
Believe it or not, one thing I really tried was to apply hot wax on my eyes - it first happened through a bit of an accident, but in the end I would cover the entire eyes and then slowly take the wax off again. That also worked, but the real problem turned out to be the temperature of the wax which was just too high for applying it directly on the lids. Not that it was too painful, but I was worried that I could cause harm to the eyes that way.
In the end, I discovered that the easiest way to get rid of my lashes was to just pluck them with tweezers. It‘s harmless and very effective when done the right way. Yes, it happens that I pinch the delicate skin around the lashes, but I‘ve never hurt myself by doing that. Plus, when you literally pull out all lashes entirely with virtually nothing left, the eyes look so different in a way that is hard to describe unless you see it for yourself. Let‘s just say I felt/feel even balder than when I when I was „only“ browless.