Compartment 14B
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Ep-elated. 2009-10-07 - 11:58 a.m. First some backstory: as with many aspects of my appearance as it relates to being girly-girl, I have been somewhat laissez faire when it comes to removal of leg hair. I dutifully shaved the darker stuff on the lower part of my legs in high school and part-way into university, but then, well, I just stopped. The hair on my lower legs is very fine and not particularly dark. It was, I suppose, noticeable if you bothered to look at my legs, but not so noticeable that it actually drew attention to them. During the summer my leg hair was blonder and my skin was darker, making it less obvious; during the winter, when my hair is darker and stands out more against my pale skin, I was in long pants anyway. I was a bit of a feminist. I was comfortable with myself. I was, frankly, lazy, plus I took a small bit of pride in not only not caring, but visibly not caring. I thought of myself as a member of the Great Unshorn. When I started going to the gym and regularly bared my fish-belly white, unshaven legs in the winter I didn�t really change much right away. But gradually I found myself plucking with tweezers at the few darker patches that were a bit more obvious (just to the inside of my shins about � way up, in case you were curious). I�m not sure when, but sometime after becoming a fitness instructor 7 years ago I started waxing my legs (lower only; the hair above my knee is pretty much invisible/non-existent) using a home-waxing kit. (As an aside, I had no idea how many people would feel let down by me doing this; both my mother and a couple of friends remarked on how proud they�d been of me for bucking the mandatory-shaving-thing in our society.) While not particularly painful, it was nevertheless a bit of an annoyance in terms of effort, and the hair had to be fairly long for it to work. So for a long time now, I�ve been waxing probably about once every couple of months, if that, and letting it grow in between. No longer. A couple of weeks ago I took the plunge and decided to try an �epilator�, which is a fancy name for �device that rips your hair out�. There was a good sale on what looked like a halfway-decent model (a Braun Silk Epil for less than sixty bucks Canadian � no they did not pay me to write this, they�ve never heard of me and I assure you, if they had they probably wouldn�t spend sixty bucks for me to tout their product to my vast single-digit readership � and if it lasts more than a couple of years it will be cheaper than buying the waxing kits and will result in less waste plastic to throw in recycling besides), so I took the plunge and bought it. The verdict? I LOVE it! I�m used to waxing and have fine, sparse hair, so this was a breeze for me. It actually hurt less than the waxing because, instead of ripping off something stuck to my skin as well as hair, it only pulled the hair itself. It was easy to operate and my lower legs were smooth and actually tingled pleasantly when I was done. Who knows, maybe someday I�ll even stop dry-shaving my armpits with a blade over the sink before a shower (something else I�m sure would make a lot of people cringe) and try my epilator there too. Hm. Well. Don�t hold your breath for this to happen. I bet that HURTS. ------------------- I can't believe I almost forgot... it's the anniversary of starting this journal today! Six years, baybeh!!!!
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I know, I know, it sounds crazy. And when did I go from hairy-legged hippie to being someone who suffers for �beauty� by ripping the hair out of her legs? Particularly when I don�t feel that beauty precludes leg hair? I can�t fully explain it. All I know is that I get a bit self-conscious mid-winter when I�m on stage and my leg hair reaches about a centimetre long. And it�s not such a Big Issue in my mind that I feel I need to take a stand on it; I�m more comfortable looking sleek and bare-legged when I�m teaching, so that�s what I do. Maybe it�s partly because it feels like a more athletic look and I need everything I can get to bolster that self-image in my mind, being the klutzy, far-from-natural-athlete that I am, who knows? But my point is, if I�m going to get rid of the hair, I�ve found the way that I prefer to do it.
That means no swiping my stuff - text, images, etc. - without asking.
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