Do Not Try This at Home

I got an epilator for Christmas. I did actually ask for it, however now I am wondering if that was really a wise move.
When I got home from the US of A, I decided I’d have a go. So, hoiked up the leg of my jeans to expose not-quite-as-pale-as-usual flesh, coated in a soft downy coating of short hairs (fine, so it was a forest of inch long, animal-like fur, but this is my blog for goodness sake – if I can’t paint myself in a better light here, where can I?). Now, I am not a complete hair-pulling virgin. I wax my legs regularly.

An Aside
Ok, again, that may be painting myself in a rather rosy glow. I wax my legs when I can be bothered. Usually highly infrequently. In fact, so infrequently that I reach states of leg-hair emergency, when I find that I need to bare my legs to the general public (i.e. perhaps wear a skirt/dress for special occasion) and I have only one removal choice. The hair is so long it would take forty razors and so long that trying to wax it would end in an inordinately painful, sticky mess. Leaving me with just depilatory cream. Bliss. Whack it on, ten minutes of dancing around the bathroom, singing into my Pop Idol microphone-shower-radio* and hey presto, Robert’s your mother’s brother, smooooth legs. So why not indulge in this blissful method of hair removal all the time, I hear you ask. Yes, good question. Because it’s just not painful enough is why. And beauty is pain.

So yes, I wax my legs regularly and am not a hair-pulling virgin. But I’ll admit it – I’m not feeling like an intrepid epilator. I am feeling decidedly apprehensive about letting this growling machine near my downy legs. And it does growl (and yes, I am sticking with the word “downy”).

But I’m a brave kind of girl and having asked for the damn thing for Christmas I’ve got to use it at lease once. So here goes, I am sitting with the growling-hair-puller hovering just inches from my legs, it is approaching my legs, getting closer and closer, I am squinting my eyes and gritting my teeth in an expression of pain, in anticipation for the coming agony, here goes, I’m going to do it, I really am.

Dzz-zzz-zzz-zzz – I’m doing it! And it’s not even that painful, nope, it’s fine, no problem at all – woo hoo – it was worth asking for, oh, no, hang on a second… Ow, ohh, bl00dy hell, that hurts. Ow, stop, ow, ow, ow, stop, stop.

Damn it. Mission failed.



*That’s right – no hairbrush for me, oh no. My little sister gave me this item for Christmas – a shower radio in the shape of a microphone, which you attach to the wall with a suction cup – however you can actually take the microphone out of the suction-cup-holder – making it a portable microphone. Oh god – don’t worry – it doesn’t actually make my voice audible above its normal level. Jeez – I wouldn’t subject the neighbours to that. Too often.