I was just invited to a friend’s house in Miami for President’s day weekend. I want to go, but there’s something in my way (beyond not being ready to be in a bathing suit and having pasty, white, winter skin). It’s my fear of bikini wax. Seriously, I’m a baby and once when I much younger I treated myself to a  Completely Bare wax and the nice cosmetologist (who was also a body buildler) told me that she’d do it, but I was not cut out for this kind of beauty treatment. She kept saying, you are shaking, you are so scared, maybe you should be happy the way you are. Mind you, she had just confided in me that once she tore off part of a woman’s labia because she flinched when she wasn’t supposed to. Waxing is always going to hurt, she said, unless you keep coming to get calluses used to the pain. I didn’t go back.

But I can’t wear those bathing suits with skirts. I will have to get it done eventually. So I decided to investigate and I called Nikita Wilson, a chemist and vice president of Cosmetech Laboratories in Fairfield, New Jersey to get the real deal on an ouchless wax. “You’re never going to get a painless wax,” she said, but she does think new breakthroughs have made waxing more bearable.

Here’s what you do: Pretreat the area with an over-the-counter lidocaine cream (such as GiGi Anesthetic Skin Numbing Spray, $20), which acts like a low dose topical novocaine. Sprinkle powder on your bikini line. It zaps moisture and makes the hair easier to grip. Whether you’re getting waxed at a salon or using a kit, make sure the wax contains essential oils or an antimicrobial to soothe. Lavender oil and tea tree oil create a barrier between the wax and your skin so the wax grabs only your hair follicle—not the skin surrounding the hair, which is one reason you feel pain. Also be sure your kit that contains azulene, a potent anti-inflammatory that won’t reduce the sensation of stripping but will reduce the sensitivity and irritation afterward.  Salons may use a wax infused with anti-inflammatory, or they may apply azulene oil (like Parissa Azulene Oil Aftercare, $9) as a post-treatment.

When you are ready to rip: The direction you tear the wax off can reduce the intensity of the pain. Apply the wax in the same direction your hair grows, then press down. When pulling the wax off, don’t tear the strip up and off as if you would a Band-Aid. Instead, quickly pull the strip away as if you are turning a page in a book; this puts less pressure on your skin and hair, so it stings less.

Honestly, now I’m kind of excited, but we’ll see what really happens.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Tips to try and share with friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.