Pour some sugar on me
Home » Blog » Annabel McAleer » Pour some sugar on meGood's intrepid editor sacrifices her bikini line to science.
After we wrote about men's shaving in Good #8, we were inundated with queries (well, at least three or four) about what hair removal solutions are best for women.
The way to go was waxing, we declared with confidence—well, aside from rocking the au naturel look. Waxing does away with the disposable plastic razor, and with strong depilation chemicals. (Using an epilation device like an Epilady is also a good call for legs … but hella painful elsewhere!) But that was before we'd heard of sugaring.
Sugaring works exactly the same way as waxing: similarly sticky stuff, it's spread onto the region you want hair-free, a cotton strip is laid over the top and then ripped off, pulling the hair out from the roots. There's no way of making the process painless, but sugaring comes closer than waxing.
It's also a more eco-friendly way to inflict pain on yourself, being made of food-ish ingredients like sugar, lemon juice, water and essential oils. You can even eat it, if you wanted to (though I can't think why you would). Waxes are made from resins and contain fragrances, colour and preservatives— not so yummy. Plus, they stick to the skin as well as the hair, so waxing's more painful and leaves more redness than sugaring, which pretty much just sticks to the hair.
I went to pro-waxer Denize Knaap at Brazilian Wax Express for a basic bikini sugar wax (call me chicken, I ain't going the whole hog!). Although the sugar process is reportedly lower-temperature than regular waxing, I found the opposite: the sugar was much hotter than wax. But aside from the heat, it was less painful overall, and the redness faded much faster than from a regular wax.
You can buy a sugaring DIY kit called 'Bodeze' from most Warehouse and Postie Plus stores, or even make the sugar paste yourself, but it's quite a faff and there's a risk of burning yourself on hot sugar. Much easier to take yourself to a pro: sugaring's available at salons all over New Zealand.
Fri October 16, 2009 @ 04:30 PM
