* CONTAINS SOME GRUESOME IMAGES *
Being naturally fair skinned and having dark hair comes with many disadvantages: I am more prone to sunburn, and also, facial redness, broken capillaries and other flaws tend to show more on my lighter skin. But by far, the biggest annoyance to me is that dark body hair shows up much more against pale skin.
Therefore, I can either tan myself up with my good old fake-tan (which I have to do most of the time) or, do all I can to remove the hair!! I would absolutely love to have laser hair removal in the future but right now, it is not in my price range. I think for me, laser hair removal would be the ultimate goal and only then would I be happy! But until then, I am testing every other affordable method. (of which none are permanent unlike the laser treatments!) I have tried every single alternative there is on the market: bleaching, waxing, threading, shaving, plucking....you name it, I've tried it.
Hair removal creams have worked for me in the past so I decided to have a go at it again. I am extremely conscious of the hair I have on my arms. It has always been something I have been very embarrassed about since I was a child. Therefore, that is the place I went to apply my newly bought bottle of Veet Hair Removal Cream.
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| Veet Hair Removal Cream |
This particular kit (retailing around £6 I think) comes with a 100ml tube of the hair removal cream and a bendy spatula device that you use to both smooth it on and scrape it off with.
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| The Veet box contents |
Now this has been a product I have used for many years, I know it works and it is a quick, easy and painless way to remove my unwanted hair, therefore, the advised 'patch test' was not needed (or so I thought).
I began slathering the cream all over my arms as I would normally do and then set my timer to 5 minutes. The box recommends a minimum of 3 minutes and a maximum of 6 minutes.
After a few minutes I noticed a cold tingly sensation down my arms, but I brushed it off, putting the feeling down the cream 'doing its job'. After my alarm went, I eagerly started scraping the cream off with the given device. At this point my skin was extremely sensitive, I could barely touch the spatula against my sore skin. I resorted to washing it off with cool water, only to reveal bright red patches and open sores all over my arms!
The cream has actually burnt away at my skin, leaving it with tonnes of little open wounds! The pain was awful, it was as if someone had pricked me with a little knife all over my arms! :( I sent out a tweet on my Twitter page, SWalkerMakeup, asking for any help or advice and I immediately got bombarded with all sorts of responses from my followers saying that they had suffered with the same thing. I got lots of helpful advice from people and most of them said to hold a cold flannel over it to ease the stinging and then cover it in Savlon or Sudocream.
I re-read over the instructions to make sure I had done everything correctly, and I had!
Then something hit me on the front of the box....
They had changed the formula!! I can only think that this was the reason that I had had such a bad reaction to this cream. I was so used to using it in the past and I was fine, but the new formula clearly didn't agree with my poor arms! By this time it was getting very late and I decided to go to bed and see how my open burns were in the morning.
I woke up to find that my skin had soaked in all the Sudocream but I was left with nasty looking scabs and raised red rash-looking patches. What a state my arms looked :( now they are not only hair-free, but they are also complete with oozy wounds and red patches. Great.
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| The morning after the reaction |
The photo above shows how my arms looked the morning after. I guess I have learnt the hard (and very painful) way! But I am thankful that I can warn you all of this harsh product! If you are looking to buy Veet Hair Removal Cream, I would say to avoid it and go for something else. You can clearly see what happened to me and I would hate for someone else to go through the same experience.
My arms are now feeling much less stingy and I am just waiting for the little sores to heal up completely. Most people on Twitter says this will take 2-3 days. My skin does feel extremely tight right now, but I guess I will just have to wait to be back to normal. I was so angry at what this product did to my skin and I will contacting the company that produces Veet to tell them of my experience.
Hope you all enjoyed reading - sorry for the gross photo's but I just had to share this with you!
Lots of love,
Sara
♥
