A Few Zaps and Her Waxing’s Waning
My armpits are the life of the party. These days it’s becoming fairly commonplace for my friends to pull off my shirt and yell, “Look at Julie’s under arms! She’s been lasered!” as they lift limbs and compare.
I’ve never been a particularly hairy person but I’ve never been a particularly non-hairy person. A lifetime waxer, I experienced a delusional folly that lasted four years--I decided to have the hair on my legs removed by electrolysis. Admittedly, this was painful, time-consuming and expensive and, while some deforestation resulted, I was far from smooth. When my social life demanded it, my sex life picked up or the weather took a turn for the warmer, back I’d go to waxing.
So when Beverly Hills cosmetic dermatologist Harold Lancer invited me to take part in a clinical trial to test a laser hair removal system, I jumped at the chance. In return, I had to agree to grow everything out for a few months, be lasered on selected sites and allow those areas to be photographed to monitor regrowth (if any) every few weeks. I would be smooth in some areas, hairy in others and patchy all over. As I am fair with dark hair, it wasn’t pretty.
My doctor kept asking, “Are you seeing anybody yet?” knowing full well that even partially hirsute I would be reluctant to bare my legs, to say nothing of other areas, to a paramour. When I answered in the negative he said, “Good! Please don’t for another couple of weeks. Just hang on!” When it was all over, the hair would be lasered off from ankle to bikini as well as from my under arms.
The device itself--an EpiTouch Ruby Laser--is a large piece of generic beige equipment that looks somewhat like that which holds the drill in a dentist’s office. At my first session, the doctor shaved a business card-sized swatch of my hairy shin down to a 1/16 stubble and smeared it with clear sonogram gel. He then donned goggles and set to work zapping each hair.
The sensation has been compared to that of a rubber band snapping against skin. I found that, depending on the site, the sensation ranged from hardly noticeable to the near-pain of little hot needles poking my skin. The knees, being bony, aren’t a lot of fun, but after about 10 pulses in one area, the endorphins kick in and the site goes numb. Still, compared to the pain of electrolysis, this was a breeze. It took about 20 minutes to clear a 2-by-3-inch area.
The laser hair removal industry is in its infancy, with four beam-based systems now approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They are the Palomar Epilaser, the Thermolase SoftLight, the Sharplan EpiTouch and the just-approved ESC EpiLight Hair Removal System.
Although laser hair removal is a cosmetic procedure, most systems are in doctors’ offices, primarily those of dermatologists and plastic surgeons. There are two reasons: The technology was developed for medical purposes such as removal of port wine stains and the equipment is expensive, upward of $140,000 per laser--out of reach for most cosmetologists. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for a physician to lease or rent rather than buy laser equipment, whether for hair removal or wrinkle erasure.
But you don’t have to be a doctor to operate the laser legally and it is usually a nurse, aesthetician or technician who does the actual zapping, an extremely time-consuming and labor intensive hair-by-hair procedure. Even with the boundaries blurring between medical and cosmetic treatments in dermatology, physicians aren’t likely to be doing hair removal full time.
The big issues in hair removal are, of course, permanence and cost.
“Absolute permanence per se isn’t something you can promise,” Lancer explains, “because hair is hormonally influenced and varies so much from person to person, as it does from location to location. However, at three to five [two to three hour] treatments per site, we can expect very long-term non-hair growth or significant thinning.” That contrasts with a 30% success rate for electrolysis, he says.
He explains that most of what is known about hair growth and hair loss is based on studies of balding men. “We do know that at any given time 20% of the follicles on the scalp are dormant, or what we call in the telegen phase. While I know of no studies on body hair growth, anecdotally I’d say that about 10% to 15% is going to sprout later. This may give the impression of regrowth when in fact it is just plain growth.”
Laser hair removal is expensive. The three treatments needed to remove hair from the under arms run about $1,200 in the Los Angeles area. Three treatments, six to 10 hours total, for a clean bikini line cost about $1,500. Even at about $4,000 for legs, under arms and bikini, there’s no shortage of willing customers. Lancer says he is booked a month in advance.
Spa Thira, which is owned by Thermolase Corp., has 13 foreign and domestic locations, including Beverly Hills, and is expanding. “All our salons in every location are booked all day, every day,” says senior marketing manager Gemini Babla--and 85-95% of clients are having laser hair removal. “Clearly, this is the technology of the future.”
As for me, I can say that two treatments--a total of 10 hours--on the ankle-to-thigh terrain and under the arms have achieved what four years of electrolysis didn’t: near hairlessness. I’m about three-fourths of the way there. It’s not yet perfect yet and I have more zapping in store. But would I do it again? You bet. In a heartbeat.
