Q: I wrestle with the idea of shaving legs and armpits. What are my options?
[rssbreak]
A: Being the early girly-girl I was, I started covertly shaving my legs in locked bathrooms when I was in, oh, Grade 4. But by the time I was a hardened feminist hippy chick at 16, I’d kissed razors goodbye (for a year anyway).
While stats show men are buying fewer razors, leg and underarm hair never really caught on with North American women. That doesn’t mean you can’t find a little crunchy granola vibe in the world of hair removal.
For instance, someone’s actually invented a solar-powered shaver. As long as you have a sunny window to keep it in, reviewers give it a thumbs-up (outdoorgb.com). With a little more elbow grease, a Dynamo wind-up shaver will do the trick, but keep in mind that you get just over a minute of shave time for every minute of cranking (e-light.us, stuffjunction.com).
If cross-border online shopping is not your thing, you can find Energy Star-certified electric shavers these days that use 35 per cent less energy than their competition. If you leave a regular old rechargeable electric shaver in its base, it can draw as much as five to 20 times more energy than the battery actually holds! As with the beard trimmer, leave it unplugged until it starts fading. My guy plugs his beard trimmer in once every six weeks.
Still, these gadgets are necessarily filled with questionable heavy metals, including those in the rechargeable batteries you’ll want to make sure get recycled safely at the end of their life.
If you’d prefer to go low-tech, you can score razors by Recycline made of recycled yogurt cups with replaceable heads at your local health store, but the blades aren’t wickedly sharp and seem to go dull too easily. Plus, just like all other safety razors, the cartridges aren’t recyclable.
Some badass girls go silky-smooth with – gasp – a simple old-fashioned straight razor. I can’t say I’m brave enough to have tried, but you will find women on the Web with friendly tips for doing it yourself. Just make sure if you invest in a straight razor to stay away from those with handles made from dodgy exotic woods like teak or illegal ivory.
Klutzy chicks with a propensity for injury (ahem) can always play it safe with the ancient Egyptian technique of sugaring, the all-natural petroleum-free version of waxing. You can buy a kit from the store (Moom makes one), get it done at a salon like Sugar Moon on Danforth or make the solution yourself at home: heat 2 cups of sugar, ¼ cup of lemon juice and ¼ cup of water.
As it cools, sprinkle corn starch on your legs, then smear a thin layer of the paste on your legs (with the grain), apply washable cotton strips, then yank (against the grain).
By the way, if you do go for a razor, don’t be fooled by the increase in prominently promoted natural ingredients like sunflower oil and passionflower in drugstore shaving creams in recent years. Environmental Defence’s new fragrance report points out that fragrance-free options help you avoid the hidden air pollutants, allergens, hormone disruptors and possible carcinogens crammed into synthetic scents (see toxicnation.ca), but shaving creams still give you a faceful of petrochemicals, parabens and formaldehyde-releasing chems like DMDM hydantoin.
You’ll find plenty of even creepier endocrine disruptors like BHA in Skintimate’s Signature Scents and soil-, water- and breast-milk-contaminant triclosan in a growing number of shaving creams, including Aveeno’s Therapeutic Shaving Gel and its Positively Smooth Shave gel.
And regardless of what’s in it, an aerosol cream or gel pumps out smog-inducing VOCs, which is why California forced shaving companies to reduce VOCs from 7 per cent of their product by weight to 4 per cent by 2009.
Shaving creams – even health-store-bought ones – aren’t really necessary for women. Your natural/organic body wash easily does double duty for razor shaving. Men will be better off with a simple organic shaving oil. Finally, don’t forget to shave with the taps off.
Got a question?
Send your green queries to ecoholic@nowtoronto.com
