Ok, time for another important t-girl topic, and another rant about hair removal. Ok, ok, maybe I’ll leave out the rant part!

I’m sure you all know how much I hate shaving and hair removal. And if not, see my other hair removal posts So laser seems like a quite viable option for me. But I don’t want to explain to a clinic why I want all my hair removed, so I’d like to do it at home. Sounds great, right?

Laser hair removal has been around for a little while now, but it’s only been available at doctors offices and spas to be used by “trained” professionals. I know everyone’s afraid of lasers, and sure if it’s capable of burning away your hair it’s likely to be capable of burning your skin too if used wrong . . . but the real limitation has been in the equipment. I mean seriously, would you pay $100,000 to lug one of these things around your house? I would imagine programming this aesthetic laser would be about as friendly as programming a VCR too!

Anyway, when it comes down to it, lasers are just light. Concentrated light to be sure, but just light. And just like a black shirt gets hot if you go out in the sun (relative to a white shirt), dark hair absorbs laser light faster than the surrounding (lighter) skin. If you do it right, you literally burn up the hair without your skin getting more than a little warm. The tricky part is making sure you use the right wavelength to target the hair (and not skin, freckles, moles, etc, etc), leaving the light on for the right amount of time (enough to burn the hair, but not damage the skin), and not using a laser if the color difference between your hair and skin is too small! But seriously, if you have blond hair, I don’t want to hear about your shaving issues. And if you have dark skin, your hair doesn’t show up as much. It’s those of us tgirls with really pale skin but really thick dark hair who are suffering and could be most effectively treated with laser hair removal! But how do we do it without going to a spa or doctor??

Well there’s this thing, which looks like it was assembled in the 70′s and has been sitting in a warehouse waiting to kill someone ever since . . . Devices like this are not “FDA approved”. And while normally that doesn’t scare me, shelling out $600-$1500 for something that looks like this definitely does scare me. The real reason it’s not FDA approved is because there are no safety cutoffs on it – you could leave it on too long or use it on skin that’s too dark and end up burning yourself. But as a result of not being FDA approved, they can’t technically sell it for use on humans to remove hair . . . so the whole business is a bit shady and as a result I don’t trust it to deliver precisely controlled laser energy and thus am not buying one. (yet)

And here’s the Tria, which is sort of FDA approved? Supposedly they were offering a limited number for direct order in the US this spring, but only if you signed up for their email list and made a purchase over the phone. I did actually sign up and got a phone call, but it went to voicemail and it seems I missed my chance – they are now only available through doctors offices. Talk about a strange marketing strategy . . . You can buy them in the EU with no problem, and they claim they will be opening up internet sales in the US by this fall . . . we will see. It’s $1000, so the thing better work! It only treats a small area at a time, so it will take awhile to do your full body, and you will probably have to do it every 3 months or so (not quite permanent) but it would still be a big improvement over shaving!

There are also a few other companies with late stage FDA testing on laser hair removal devices for the US market (Palomar is working on one as well), but I’ve not heard any marketing or roll-out plans I wonder if any others will actually make it to market anytime soon. I’m going to pick up the first one I can get my hands on conveniently and from the privacy of my own home, and I will let you know how it works.