I happen to have a case of two clients who were evaluating hair removal methods at the same time. They both were Trans Girls just getting started on permanent hair removal. They both had more than 350 black hairs per square inch on early 40’s skin with no noticeable grey or white hairs.
After independent research, one of these friends chose to do electrolysis, the other L.A.S.E.R. During the early going, the one who was working with me talked to me about how her friend was making fun of her “stupidity” because she was doing “obsolete electrolysis.”
In Six months both their faces looked about the same, but as the year ended, my client’s skin softened brightened and we settled in to the maintenance phase, while the other gal hit a point where there was a diminishing return on her treatments. She soon discontinued all treatments and waited another year before contacting me to see if I would still be willing to take her on as a client. By this time, her friend had long ago threw away her razors and was seeing me on a very limited basis for “Nit Pick Sessions”.
When I went to work on her, what I found was that the year of non treatment, for her created a situation where her hair had either turned white, or gone from dark black to light brown with a stripe of white down the middle. Most of the hair had gone from straight to “J” shapes with a sharp angle of exit from the skin that made ingrown hairs more of a problem.
The good news for her, when she shaved, the skin looked clear from a distance, because there was little color in the hair on her face. The bad news, since the hair was still more than 350 per square inch, texture would show through makeup, and the skin was not smooth to the touch.
We have only recently begun treatments, but I have already removed 10,000 hairs from just the area from her neck and mask area.
As I have said before, I imagine that my experience with post-L.A.S.E.R.-clients would have to be skewed by definition (if they got what they wanted from it, most would never contact me at all) but in this one case, I know what the before and the after looks like, and I am very unimpressed.
Just to be fair, however, I do have a client who had L.A.S.E.R. treatments, and did at least get a reduction of hairs. The hairs that remain are also more white than black, but both the blacks and the whites are distorted, and have an unnaturally sharp angle of exit from the skin.
I can’t speak for most people, but I believe that I could have done as good and probably better than the results they got from the light based treatment, had I been given the same amount of money, and treated them over the same amount of time. Yes, they would have needed more hours initially, but over the same number of months, they would have had what I, and they would find to be a better result.
