Day 15

Day 15, Week 3, Session 6

I was meant to do it yesterday, but I needed a whole day to recover from Saturday night.
Five days between sessions = too long. I hope I haven't missed the magical window of no!no! effectiveness. And I can tell you for sure that it hasn't occurred yet because after 5 days of growing I could see that every single last hair is still here.
Christmas season or not, the 2-3 times a week schedule must be maintained. Darn it.

Time: 60 min

Results: Same, though the longer hair on my inner thigh was resistant to being caught be the wire, as described on Day 1.

Notes: Sydney is REALLY humid at the moment. I left it a bit late in the day (10am) and my skin was sticky with the sweat. The no!no! doesn't glide on sticky skin and after wasting 10 minutes, i finally gave up and had a cold shower.

Day 10 - a tardy post

Day 10, Week 2, Session 5

I can't get Blogger to datestamp my posts to Sydney time so the maths won't make sense - just trust me that Day 10 was Christmas Eve.
We were going to go away for Christmas and I didn't want to inflict burnt-hair-smell on anyone else so i squeezed in a session between finishing work and embarking on the road trip.

I cheated - simply used the stubble blade twice.

Time for whole leg, including top of thigh, knees and big toes:
60 min

Result: Using the stubble razor twice got me a smoother finish because I ended up seriously over doing it.
Probably not a smart move, but i wanted it to last as long as possible.
Which wasn't long - I was seriously spiky by Boxing Day anyway.

Notes:
There is a Time Spent vs Results Achieved maxima that my idealism is ignoring. Duh. I should probably just follow the instructions or give up on the no!no! and use a razor.
My new mantra: "Just follow the damn instructions, you fool!"

Day 8 - so begins the second week in the land of no!no!

Day 8, Week 2, Session 4.

They do say (repeatedly) that success depends on your commitment to the treatment program.
I can say that it is already getting old, but I'm going to try to stick to 3 times a week for at least the first 6 weeks. Then maybe i can drop back to twice a week.

Time: 60 minutes.
The "Roll out of bed and plug in the no!no!" approach isn't working for me. I just don't wake up that fast.
New plan: Make tea, make lunch and drink tea, THEN no!no! and shower.

Result: Smoother than last couple of times.
Tried to be more thorough with the stubble blade, so i probably over no!no!d. But if that is what it takes...

Notes:
- So much skin-dust from buffering! Presumably because i didn't moisturise last night.
- Tried to no!no! my big toes. It worked, eventually, but it is very hard to get the glide action going on such a small area. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Day 5

Third Session.

Probably shouldn't have done it this morning - every 2 days is a bit more frequent than the 2-3 times a week prescribed - but trying to find time on Christmas weekends is just too difficult to contemplate. I have better things to do, like sleep.

Used the long blade first - i hadn't grown many 'long' hairs in the previous 48 hrs but i'm sticking to protocol - and then got thorough with the stubble blade.
Also, I tried to concentrate on keeping the glide slow.(My patience runs out pretty quickly and I start moving the no!no! faster in the misguided hope that I'll be done sooner when it just means the no!no! is less efficient.)

Time for whole legs: 50 min
A little extra attention on the knees. That, and I was still half asleep.

Result: Not as close a crop as the first time. Stubble still soft, though.

Notes: In trying to stop my skin dying, i'm moisturising the day/night before I no!no!. Perhaps supple skin squishes away from the no!no! more, resulting in longer stubble. However, since i'm showering after no!no!ing in order to wash off the smell of burnt hair, I get to massage moisturiser into my legs and thighs afterwards as well. Perhaps I can nuke my hair and minimise the visible effects of cellulite at the same time! Ah, the beauty myth. How we love it!

Day 3

Second try.

On Monday i made the mistake of watching the full DVD* rather than just reading the cheat sheet. DVD says "pass over the skin until it feels smooth" while the cheat sheet says "Do not over no!no! 2-3 passes should be enough. This is a process - shave or buff stubborn hair away."
Anyway, I have resolved to stick to the 4 step process with only 2 passes per blade from now on.
The hair didn't look long enough for the "long hair" hot blade, but i smelled burning hair, so I guess it was working.

Time for whole leg: 40 minutes!
Mostly, i attribute this to the fact that I didn't have to mow down such a long lawn as i did two days ago.

Result: Still the 'shaved last night' feel. I'm getting better at knees too.

Notes:
- The stubble from no!no! is still spiky but not as damn prickly as shaving stubble cos the hairs are melted rather than whittled to points. The Man has decided it is okay and i don't need stockings in bed.
- The red stretch mark scar in my inner thigh stopped being red after a day but it is now a little darker than its fellows. Lesson 1: Don't burn your scars. Lighter no!no!ing today in the same area hasn't reproduced redness as yet (1hr).




* The DVD also shows models no!no!ing on a white couch. Hm. Hair trimmings and burnt hair smell. Couch. Right... Also, the amount of dead skin you can buff up after heat-treating your legs is quite astounding. Hint: ONLY no!no! ON TILES OR FLOORBOARDS. Unfortunately for my fiance, the only place with boards and good light that isn't the kitchen or the bathroom is the landing outside our bedroom. Burnt hair smell is a great incentive to get out of bed, poor dear.

Day 1 - first impressions

[Ed. I promise all subsequent posts will be much shorter.}
Whose stupid idea was it to try to commit to a regular treatment program during the Christmas period?!? Thursday just didn't happen.
Anyway, I've restarted the numbering and today was Day 1.
Woke up, had a shower, made tea and watched the instruction DVD. Then I no!no!'d my legs;
lower leg,
knees,
back of thighs all the way up, and
inner thigh to bikini line.
It is a 4-step process: You run the hot blade 'for longer hair' over an area until all the hairs are burned. You buff the skin. Then you run the hot blade 'for stubble' over the same area until the area is smooth, and re-buff the skin.

First impressions:
Things they warned me about.
1. Heat. I barely noticed the heat at all. Not even on my inner thigh. If you move the no!no! too slowly the hot blade disengages from the current so you can't burn yourself. I like this feature.

2. Odour. Yes, it smells like burning hair and you need to wash your body of the smell afterwards. Use in a ventilated area and this isn't a problem.

3. Redness. I see no redness over my legs akin to the post-wax polka-dot effect.
I do however have quite a bit of redness in my inner thighs where i had to no!no! the most. Especially, i have stretch marks on the inner thigh that have come up very red. It does say not to use the no!no! over scars but i forgot the stretch marks were there.
I will keep you posted as to how long it lasts.

4. Curved areas. Yes, knees are hard. While the slow gliding technique was easy to get the hang off with the help of the flashing green light, working out how to best work around the bumps and bones of the knee will take me a few sessions to master. Also, if you had a childhood that wasn't wrapped in cotton wool, those bumps in your shin bones will make gliding up the front of the leg harder.

Things they DIDN'T warn me about.
5. GOOD HOLY LORD BUT THIS TAKES A LONG TIME!
For two legs, it took 1.5 hours the first time. And i can still see that i missed bits.
This isn't like using a blade - you have to glide over an area repeatedly to get all the hairs, sometimes multiple directions, and you have to do it slowly to be effective.
There are 4 steps, yes, but you do them a dozen times!
I hope this gets faster as i go because i don't have 4-5 hours a week. Also, the Hot Blades are only meant to last for ~ 3 hours before the filament wire breaks. At this rate, i'll have to buy new ones every week. That would make me not happy.

6. The longer and softer the hair, the harder it is to convince the wire to connect with it - i had to repeat the whole 4-step process for my inner thighs which may be why i see redness there and not anywhere else.


END RESULT: Day 1
After an hour and a half, my legs feel as if i shaved them last night and i can still see patches of hair. If the no!no! stubble isn't softer than shaving stubble, my poor Man is in for a rough six weeks. I'll have to start wearing stockings to bed!

Why Bother?

In answer to Mr Tops, I think a little self-justification is required here.
I do rant about the stupidity of society kow-towing to fashion on a regular basis so it does seem fairly hypocritical, or at the very least contrary, for me to place such a high value ($280 to be precise) on hairlessnessness.

Let me put it to you straight. The natural state of body hair may indeed be soft and, in a word, natural. But after years of hair removal that began at age 14 when i first borrowed my father's razor to vanquish the fine, pale hairs i had noticed poking through my ballet tights - I was 14, forgive me - my hair is now neither soft nor natural.
I belong to a gene pool where by hair is encouraged to fight back from insult. (You've seen my brother's back, right?) Net result: I am now very firmly in the realm of the bristle brush.

Now,
I'm getting married in 6 months and 2 weeks. I have a dream that my wedding day will not be preceded by 2 months of growing all my hair out so i can have one successful wax that will last out the honeymoon, and I am adamant that getting blood stains on my gown from all my shaving nicks will not be a concern that morning.

And to continue my stance against shaving, my poor Man got a leg-full of exfoliating stubble against his side this morning.
Saint that he is, he never said a word.

Raison d'etre

I am a fairly hairy girl who, like every other hairy woman on the planet, seems to spend such a large portion of my life trying to become non-hairy that it would show up as the strange burnt-orange-coloured wedge of a pie chart.

I bought a no!no! just two days ago, and the sole purpose of this blog is to document my experiences and progress for the information of other potential no!no! users and for the amusement of my friends.

That's it.

Now, had i thought of this blog first, i would have taken photos of my legs as they were when, in my desperation, i spent $280 at Myer on a tiny fluoro pink device having not done any research of my own. Unfortunately, since the first thing i did yesterday was to shave off my patchwork waxing job so as to start with a uniform fur coat, I'll have to gross you out in words:

Waxing works for a matter of days before i get a fuzz of all the hairs that broke rather than pulled, and then at two weeks i begin to get the horrible regrowth of sparse yet thick and black hair that is patchy and involves a lot of ingrown hairs despite loofering every day.
At this point i have a choice - wax again at 4 weeks to get all the fast-growing hair and then wax AGAIN at 6 weeks to get all the slower-emerging hair (do the maths - this results in continual waxing), or start shaving when the hairs start emerging until i can do a full wax again. What is the point of waxing in the first place?
Shaving produces dark, thick 5 o-clock-shadow stubble which does nothing for my love life, not to mention a bloody mess courtesy of the ingrown hairs and other imperfections from years of stubbornly waxing my inner werewolf away.

Yet all this fades into insignificance against the fact that I have man-hair up the back of both my thighs.
All the way up.
It is dark, thick, runs in all directions, is the hardest to wax and produces the worst stubble rash imaginable. I wish I could show you a photo. Be grateful that I can't.


So, I shaved yesterday. Day 0.
The no!no! is meant to be used 2-3 times a week. I guess I'll do the first run on Thursday morning. Day 3. I'll let you know how i get on.