I've always hated showering.

Men seem to love it. Joe takes 3 showers a day sometimes.

I think I mostly hate showering because it feels like a job. If I was able to get in, wash an inch of hair, and get out, I'd probably take them all the time too. But for me, showering entails washing my hair, washing my body, conditioning my hair, washing my face, perhaps exfoliating my face, shaving my legs, shaving my armpits, huffing and puffing while trying to detangle my hair, and finally, moisturizing.

Showers still pretty much entail all of that, except for the shaving part. I currently shave my legs and armpits every two to three weeks as needed, and that's because I've lasered almost all the hair off. At home.

Let me explain.

I actually got my bikini and pits professionally lasered about 6 years ago at a salon. It worked ~pretty~ well. As expected, the hair magically fell out about a week after each treatment, revealing smooth skin. But after about a year or so, most of it came back.

How I Finally Found the Best At-Home Laser Hair Removal System

Since then, a few at-home laser hair removal products have been FDA-approved and are slowly going down in price. I was waiting patiently for a [somewhat] affordable option to come along and finally found one I could invest in. A couple years ago, I got the Silk'n Flash&Go Hair Removal Device off of Amazon and started to take things into my own hands.

Does Laser Hair Removal Work?

The thing is that yes, laser hair removal does work. But since your hair grows in cycles, it may come back after 6 months or a year, and then you'll have to do another round of treatments. If you're paying a professional to zap off your hair, this can obviously get super expensive. The Silk'n laser hair remover works almost as good as a professional treatment, but the beauty is that you can use it whenever the fuck you want.

How At-Home Laser Hair Removal Cured My Childhood Insecurities

The other thing about all this is that my dad is a hairy Italian. My sisters kinda got my mom's blond hair, but I have brown hair, and I used to have very dark and very long hair on my arms and legs. This was mortifying for me growing up and I constantly tried to either hide or correct the problem. In third grade, one of my classmates (this shitty little girl named Cori) said to me, "You have hairy arms. Shave 'em." And while I quietly hated her for saying that, in retrospect, I suppose she was trying to offer some advice. And you know what? I did shave them, behind my mom's back. I was the only little girl with body hair this dark. Add that to my already painfully shy demeanor, and you have one awkward 8-year-old. Joe is a brunette Italian too and sometimes I worry that my future hairy daughter will be confused by her hairless mother, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

best at-home laser hair removal tria silk'n

A Few Things to Know About At-Home Laser Hair Removal

It hurts. The pain is comparable to waxing, but it gets better. (Ibuprofen helps.)
It works by targeting dark hairs on light skin. This, unfortunately, means that it works only for a small demographic. Also, you can't have a tan when you do the treatment.
At-home laser hair removal works effectively, but only if you keep doing it.

The Best At-Home Laser Hair Removal Device from Amazon

The Silkn' laser hair remover only has 3 out of 5 stars on Amazon, which doesn't seem very good. However, I would also rate the professional treatment 3 out of 5 stars. This is because laser hair removal works, but you have to keep doing it again and again and again, which can obviously be very expensive. And that's why getting an at-home laser hair removal system is such a life hack. I really do think the Silkn' Flash&Go Hair Removal Device is the best at-home laser hair removal product on the market. You definitely get the most bang for your buck.

One of the main perks of laser hair removal is that you don't have to grow your hair out like you do with waxing. You shave your legs like you normally would, and then you zap the little dots where your roots are.

Speaking of those little dots....with laser hair removal, they start to just disappear. About a week after you do a treatment, I guess the hairs just fall out, because suddenly, they're gone. Poof!

Like I said, I got the device two winters ago. My hair is allllllmost all the way gone on my legs, but I'm going heavy on treatments for the next few weeks so that I won't have to worry about shaving at all on my honeymoon. The whole process has taken some time, but it's not too much of a drag when I can do it whenever I want from home.

I still hate taking showers. But what I'm trying to say is that now that all—okay, most—of my hair is gone, I hate them a little bit less.