“I suffer from severe pain and swelling”: clients described depilation torture

For those who are not very versed in all sorts of women’s things, “depilation” and “epilation” are all the same. But in fact, depilation is a procedure aimed at removing hair from the body not forever, but for a certain period of time; it includes both home methods and salon methods. In contrast, hair removal acts on the follicle to stop hair growth permanently. Thus, hair is removed using depilatory methods (shaving, removal with cream, wax, sugar paste) and epilation (hardware hair removal: destruction of the follicle with laser, phototherapy, electric discharge).

After the terrifying reviews about depilation with wax and sugar paste (sugaring), which are the most common methods, I want to exclaim: “No, for goodness sake, a good old razor is better!”

“I removed the hair on my chest with wax, immediately after the procedure everything burned and had red spots,” complained Muscovite Ilya, who visited the salon in Kitai-Gorod. “It still burns and there are red spots all over it.” The night passed and many small pimples appeared at the depilation site, it’s even scary to look at!”

“We ruined the skin of our feet with too hot wax! – complains another victim of beauty. “Six months of recovery and a lot of money for medicine.”

“I had no luck with a wax hair removal specialist, although I chose it based on reviews,” said Muscovite Anastasia. “It was painful because of the direction in which the master tore off the tape; in some areas the hair was left uncollected, and in some places there were skin lesions the size of a palm; a layer of the epidermis was removed. I will not go to this master again!

– It’s just a nightmare. I had bikini depilation done on Novokuznetskaya by a “top” master,” another client shared her sad experience. – I have been suffering from severe pain and swelling for the third day. I did sugaring! The skin on the pubis was torn off, on the folds between the legs, and crusts formed on the labia. Some kind of rash appeared, like pimples and blisters! Everything bakes, hurts, itches and is swollen. I can neither sleep, nor walk, nor sit.

Masters often blame the clients themselves for such troubles: “I just scratched it with a dirty hand, that’s all.” The skin is vulnerable, bacteria have multiplied, the skin has reacted.”

“Both the sugaring technique and the waxing technique can have all these problems,” Olesya Kedyarova, an expert in the field of male and female depilation, Russian champion in biodepilation 2022, told MK (yes, there are such competitions – Author). . – The fact that the skin was torn off is either cheap wax, or the master worked ineptly. There are different types of waxes, and you need to know how to work with each. It can be assumed that the master did not hold the wax until the end of plasticization and tore it off while the wax was hardening, injuring the skin. The second moment when severe traumatization by wax can occur is when applications are applied to the skin many times in a row. That is, the hair was not removed the first time, the application was applied again, it was not removed again, and so on several times in a row.

After sugaring, swelling may occur as an allergic reaction to glucose-fructose or citric acid. Pastes usually have a natural composition, but people may be allergic to some natural ingredients. This needs to be clarified in advance. Once I used a material that contained chamomile. And one client experienced swelling due to an allergy to chamomile. We took it off with antihistamines.

Next point. If there was any inflammation on the pubis, then sugaring is the material that spreads the inflammation even more. Or the specialist closed the procedure with the wrong product, and acne appeared. But sometimes the client is also to blame if he does not follow the recommendations of the master. During the first day, you cannot use soap, gels or intimate foams while bathing, only water. Dry yourself only with your own clean towel, go to bed in a clean bed… You can’t have sex on the first day. You cannot wear synthetic underwear after depilation, only cotton. You should not sunbathe after depilation, otherwise there is a risk of pigment spots forming.

Problems may arise if the client did not warn the specialist about problems with blood vessels, veins, or that she has thin blood, or her skin is sensitive or prone to injury (“poke a finger and you get a bruise”). To do this, a client card must be filled out before the procedure. There are people who cannot have hair removal because their skin is too sensitive; blood vessels burst just from touching.

Most often, clients choose craftsmen by word of mouth, based on reviews from other people on the Internet. I would like to emphasize that any method of depilation needs to be learned, and one must constantly learn and develop.”

Another master Lyubov Kurkova (from Blagoveshchensk) described all the existing risks of depilation. First, this is an infection that can be transmitted by a master from one client to another if the rules for using consumables and the rules for disinfecting reusable tools, furniture and the office as a whole are not followed. The second is skin damage, for example, a breakdown (one of the most difficult to heal injuries, most often appears due to incorrectly selected material).

“When sugar paste or wax application is torn off, the top layer of skin is torn off along with the material and hair,” says the expert. – A red spot appears, on the border of which you can see pieces of exfoliated skin. May have bruising. It is fraught with the appearance of persistent pigment spots at the site of the lesion.

Third, re-peeling – removal of the epidermis down to the horn cells, which appears as a red spot. In the most severe cases, the area of ​​damaged skin may become sore, itchy, and sting when it comes into contact with clothing or water. Fourth, these are hematomas and bruises (due to the master’s lack of experience, as well as ignorance of the correct working technique).

Fifth – inflammation and irritation (for example, improperly closed skin after the procedure, when pathogenic microflora attaches, can give various reactions, including purulent inflammation). And the sixth risk is ingrown hair, which can appear both from improper work of the specialist, and for reasons beyond the control of the specialist.

Often, beginning craftsmen save money and work with cheap and low-quality materials, which can provoke all these risks. Although there are cases when the result does not depend on the specialist, various inflammations and even skin breakdown can occur with an experienced and professional specialist. For example, the client’s use of medications with retinoids, which the specialist was not warned about, can lead to peeling or tearing of the skin, and so on.

As for hardware hair removal (laser, electrolysis), this is a different story, but the risks here are many times more serious. Firstly, it can only be done by specialists with medical education, and secondly, before such a procedure, a thorough medical examination of the client is necessary, which does not always happen. “There is not a single scientifically proven experiment that laser or electrolysis causes cancer, but non-compliance with the work protocol can provoke it,” warns Kurkova. “All the risks in hardware hair removal are related to health, there are so many contraindications that few people are suitable for this procedure, but unscrupulous hairdressers do not think about the consequences in the pursuit of money, hoping that they will get away with it.” With electrolysis, for example, there is a risk of superficial trauma, such as burns and healing with scabs… In addition, many experts say that getting rid of hair forever is harmful to health: the skin deteriorates and dries, because hair performs certain functions in the body.