*yank!*

May 28, 2008 12:11 PM

Is there a reason you might experience less ingrown hair after waxing than epilating? Say regular exfoliation practices are thorough and remain the same for both methods. Is my imagination acting up, or is there more to it? I mean they both pull hair out by the roots, right?
posted by Bakuun to Health & Fitness (5 answers total)

My friend who does waxing as part of her job says that regular waxing, done by the same person with the same technique, pulls the hair and its roots in the same direction. And (according to her) with other methods the root gets pulled in different directions making said root less aligned with the follicle. Or something like that. (This could be completely wrong, I'm just repeating an explanation.)
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 1:00 PM on May 28, 2008

I haven't ever epilated, but over the last ten years I've gotten increasingly difficult ingrown hairs as waxing has thinned my hairs - maybe you're seeing a change if you just changed methods? Check back after a couple of years and see if you still think there are less ingrowns.
posted by arnicae at 1:23 PM on May 28, 2008

I have horrible ingrown hairs right now after epilating. I think it's because I've been using razors. That's what I thought, anyway.
posted by onepapertiger at 2:47 PM on May 28, 2008

I do neither, but Ms Forktine does both, and we've never noticed any difference in terms of ingrown hairs. A bad waxer will break off a lot of the hairs rather than taking them out by the root, and once in a while something about a waxing will cause a big swath of ingrown hairs -- I don't know whether it is the temperature or consistency of the wax, the direction of the pull, or what. And a lot of waxers aren't that good at it, and will sometimes miss strips of hair, which looks funny later -- the epilator machine seems to get more consistent results but at the cost of more pain and trouble.
posted by Forktine at 2:54 PM on May 28, 2008

There is a knack to ripping the hair out. If done incorrectly, the follicle may become "distorted" and it won't grow straight, making it more likely to become ingrown. Maybe it's the angle you are holding the epilator, or just the epilator itself that is tweezing the hairs at a bad angle?
posted by goshling at 9:19 PM on May 28, 2008