Beauty Gizmo

Beauty Gizmo Review : Braun Silk-épil Xpressive Part 1

by Sophia on May 15th, 2008

Hair removal is a grown-up thing. Seriously.

To be honest, at the age twenty, I never even considered waxing my legs. ( Just by age twenty-one or twenty-two heehee ). I’ve been blessed with unnoticeable leg hair that I never felt the urgency, but the moment I had it waxed, I could never ever look back again. It’s a hairless dream. Seriously ( Can you keep a straight face? heehee I’m just in a very jester mood! ). 

Kidding aside, I was able to receive a unit of Braun Silk-épil Xpressive for review a few weeks ago, and I thought, what a perfect way to get to know another method for hair removal aside from using tweezers, waxing, threading ( yeowch ), and shaving ( which I think I would say “pass” ). To be honest ( once again ), epilation is a really really new word for me, and I as I learned more about the Braun Silk-épil Xpressive, having microtweezers and everything, I was intrigued. Anything with “tweezers” makes me happy because I love tweezing.

Initial Impressions

I jumped in glee the moment my package arrived. When I took it out of the box, I was greeted with an impressively packaged set - in deep pink shade, very much girly. I opened the box and it had one mini pouch full of electronics, one pack of pre-epilation wipes by Olay ( which they have partnered with ), and an instruction booklet. The pouch full of “electronics” reminded me of dad’s electronic shaver that he had lost while in the course of our moving houses, so I was pretty skeptical if this was indeed an electronic shaver just re-marketed.

With the default “head”, the curious me wanted to know how it worked, and plugged it , and dialed to turn the gadget on.Woah. The sound of blades. Lots of micro blades furiously rolling and rolling.Fear welled inside of me and gulped. Am I really going to let this tool get swiped on my legs and back? 

The First Roll
When night time came, I was a little bit excited and freaked out as well because I will be using the epilator for the first time. After I showered, I tried the epilator with the default, wide head on my legs. ( take note :  towel-dried ). I closed my eyes for a bit because the scary sound of the epilator’s furiously rotating blades were killing me, but for one moment, I told myself, “fight!” As I started gliding the epilator’s blades on my legs, whew, it wasn’t so painful at all! Actually, it wasn’t painful at all! ( at least, for me ).

On my first pass, I felt some quick little stabs of pain ( that is more than tolerable, I might say ), and felt that skin is actually “tweezed,” and not cut or shaved at all. The epilator sure targets the roots, and I was able to definitely feel it. My leg was still not totally clear from hair after the first pass, and I had to undergo a second, or first pass to get my legs to be totally be clear from hair. Voila! Finally! 

What I noticed after my legs were totally clear from hair were,

* My legs were dry. I must admit - I really hate moisturizing my legs, so a lesson learned is that I must religiously moisturize them, or else they look really dry when hairless. No hair means all bare - so, I better grab my bottles of lotion that I’ve been buying and promised to use. Take note that it’s an absolute no-no to apply lotion just before using the epilator. It’s great to use it afterwards, though. 

* My legs were not totally smooth after epilating. Ingrown hair. Lesson learned : exfoliate, exfoliate, exfoliate to get rid of dead skin cells to prevent parts of hair hidden under the skin, unable to be removed by the epilator. Sigh. Twas one hindrance in smoothing my hands in one glide to my legs. There were “bumps.”

To sum up with my review # 1,  the Braun Silk-épil Xpressive is simply heaven-sent , but one must study Epilation 101 prior to using it an “going to battle.” I’ve been surprised with the comments of some that epilating was very painful for I did not experience excruciating pain - or the hair on my legs were simply too fine that they’re not too painful to remove. Well, that’s another review !

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POSTED IN: Electric Gadgets, hair-removal