is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Ep-illusions May Not Be Yours.
My Ep-illusions May Not Be Yours.
An update on the Ice Princess aka Norelco Phillips Satin Ice Epilator (which is no longer called the epilady, I�m told. No, not at all. The Ice Princess is No Lady!).
I still appreciate the way in which the hair stays gone for quite awhile. And I also am astonished about how true it is that it stops hurting after the initial PAINFUL introduction to the �science� of epilation. However there are a few further caveats that I feel I ought to offer.
One. You must exfoliate. You simply must. I didn�t take that piece of advice as seriously as I ought to have, and I ended up with a number of ingrown hairs. Not of the dangerous or scar-producing kind, but they are unsightly and that is enough to warrant a caveat.
However, if you use the exfoliating attachment that comes with the epilator, in conjunction with an occasional loofah or salt-scrub in the shower, the problem seems to disappear. And we all know exfoliation is good anyway, so the first caveat turns out to be minor, unless you�re really really lazy.
And if you�re that lazy, how did you ever get yourself to epilate in the first place? I mean, if you�re that lazy, why do you even worry about hair removal? Are you a dupe of the patriarchy?!
Two. Even though once you remove the hair it stays gone for an impressive amount of time, so far I�ve never been able to get all the hair gone at once. So there are always little stray hairs growing in that beg to be epilated. This takes less time than shaving every day, yes. But still. I cannot give up the utopian dream of going for a whole week without even thinking about leg-hair removal. So far the Ice Princess has not given that to me. This caveat�s power will vary according to your obsessive tendencies. Maybe the stray hairs won�t bother you. It�s also possible that over time I will finally end up with a more even hair-removal schedule. I�ll keep you posted.
Three. There is an unpleasant stage of re-growth when there are a whole bunch of new hairs just about to grow in and your leg feels like a prickly pear but the hair isn�t quite long enough to epilate. That lasts about a day, so it�s not a huge deal. But it�s not very sexy, either. Just so you know.
That�s all. Me and the Ice Princess are still down. That means we�re getting along just fine and tending to like each other. It doesn�t mean we are depressed.
Heidi, after asserting that she was seriously considering buying an Ice Princess for herself, raised the eternal question of why women would undergo pain for hair removal anyway. Fair enough. My girls and I all came of age in the midst of some extreme late-70s and 80s feminism, and I own many books by, for instance, Mary Daly, and said books have had a positive impact on my life! But I can think for myself. ....So why do we do it? I mean, is it because we are dupes of the cosmetic industry, fashion magazines, and the patriarchy? Could be. But I do like girly things like mascara and cute underwear and grapefruit-scented body scrubs. And I refuse to believe that all those things are just so much evidence of my having lost a power struggle. A girl at a philosophy conference I attended in Italy tried to raise my consciousness by telling me that my toenail polish was tantamount to being under the thumb of male oppression. I told her the shit out of this: �You are asking me to trade in a world where I do what men want for a world where I do what a small percentage of white middle class women think is best. I am telling you that neither is good enough for me and so I say to you: FALSE DILEMMA. I choose neither. And isn�t my teal-blue toenail polish cute?�
Of course it�s more complex even than that. But at least I�ve admitted that it�s complex instead of pretending like there�s one easy answer. And now, if you�ll excuse me, I have some leg-hair to remove.
7:46 p.m. - February 06, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
