Get Off My Back

I have hair everywhere! Hair removal is my biggest hurdle when I prepare to femulate. For my legs, arms and chest, I use Nair. It works fast and usually one application does the trick.

Your mileage may vary, but Nair does not irritate my skin or cause a rash as long as I steer clear of the genital area when I do my legs and my armpits when I do my arms.

My chest is another story. Surprisingly, my breasts are OK with Nair, but occasionally my upper chest turns red after using Nair. For that reason, I keep a bottle of witch hazel handy. If my chest begins to flare up, I use a washcloth to apply witch hazel to the troubled area and that usually cools things down.

Normally, I don’t wear clothing that exposes my back, so I don’t bother removing the hair there. It is impossible to reach all my back hair with a razor or with Nair. I could get it waxed, but that is a little expensive for this frugal gal. So, to avoid back hair removal, I avoid clothing that reveals my back.

However, the dress I planned to wear to the Avon Christmas party (see previous post) exposed the upper half of my back and chest, so I had to deal with my hairy problem.

The first time I was faced with this problem, I thought, why not try Nair. If it works on my legs, arms and chest, it should work on my back, too.

To test my idea, one morning I dabbed a little bit of Nair on a corner of my natural mohair sweater, waited the requisite four minutes, then took a shower. After exiting the shower, I saw something I had not seen in nearly 40 years: a spot of bare skin on my back! And it was not turning red.

Evidently, Nair would do the trick for my back hair, but how could I apply it to the far-reaches of my back. I doubted that I could do a thorough job applying it manually and I could not find a volunteer to apply the Nair for me, so I put on my thinking wig cap to find a solution.

A day or two later, I thought that a small paintbrush might do the trick. Nair had the same consistency as paint and a paintbrush’s handle would give me a little extra reach to get to those out of the way places on my back. Then, I thought a paint pad (also known as a “poly foam brush”) would work, too.

I headed to the hardware department of my favorite boutique (Walmart) to look for a paint pad. Walmart had a good selection. For my application, I chose a 2-inch wide pad with a wooden handle that cost under $1.

I was ready and when the big day finally arrived, I poured some Nair into a small disposable Styrofoam bowl. In order to get a feeling for how the foam pad would work, I did my legs first. I immediately discovered that the Nair went on faster and with better coverage with the paint pad than when I applied it by hand. In fact, it went on so fast that I did my arms and chest before tackling my back.

Since I would be working in the blind, I decided to attack my back from different directions to try and achieve full coverage. So I applied it over my left and right shoulders and around my left and right sides.

After four minutes were up, I entered the shower and used a washcloth to remove the Naired hair (the force of the shower is not adequate enough to remove the hair). To remove the Naired back hair, I wrapped the washcloth around the head of a long-handled shower brush (I learned the hard way not to use a shower brush solo to remove Naired hair. The bristles of the brush can irritate the skin that has been sensitized by the Nair).

I exited the shower and looked in the mirror to discover that I had missed a spot on my lower back. That was no surprise as that was the hardest spot to reach. So, I applied some more Nair to that area and completed the job.

In conclusion, I discovered that the paint pad not only allowed me to remove the hair on my back, but it was also a more efficient way of applying Nair in general. Using the paint pad was a lot faster and neater than doing it manually and I also used a lot less Nair. Typically, I use one and one-half bottles of Nair to do my legs and arms (I don't always do my chest). Using the paint pad, I did my legs, arms, chest, and back and only used slightly more than one bottle of Nair. As a result, a paint pad is now a permanent part of my beauty tool collection.

Wearing Venus

A blushing bride femulation by Arthur Grayson in 1909