Smooth Away: Not the Holy Grail for Hair Removal

I’m sure I am not the only chick out there dying for a better hair management system.  I pluck, I wax, I shave, I sugar – and most recently, I tried rubbing my body hair off with Smooth Away.

I have seen this on television and in the stores and admittedly been intrigued, so when I had the opportunity to try it, I jumped on it.  This is a fine grit sandpaper with adhesive on the back that sticks to a pad that is designed to fit in your hand comfortably.  The idea is that you will rub the hair off your body.

At first use, I thought – cool, this kinda works.  Using the circular motions described in the instruction booklet, I definitely was able to rub off the hair on a spot on my leg.  But, when I tried to remove all of the hair on my leg - the amount of rubbing that it took was exhausting, and I never got anywhere close to as smooth as I can get with a razor.  I am tall with long legs and have course hair on my head, so maybe I’m not the ideal candidate for Smooth Away. 

So, I next tried this on my face.  I have light downy hair on my cheeks and jaw and about enough hair on my upper lip to wax about twice a year.  Not much.  I thought this would be a better place to try Smooth Away.  Well, what happened there is that it irritated my face to the point that a couple of hours later, my skin was rough and chafed and felt really dry where I had used Smooth Away.  And for some reason, I didn’t feel like the small, “face sized,” pads were as effective as the larger ones.  Definitely not ideal.

So, what is my take-away with Smooth Away?

1.  I can’t use it on my face.  Maybe you could use it on yours – but definitely only use a really light touch and don’t go over the same areas too much.

2.  It’s way too long a process to use on my legs.  Shaving is much quicker.  Again, someone with finer hair might have a better time with this than I did.

3.  It is not bad for extending a shave.  Without a terrible effort, you can extend your shave a day or maybe two by giving your legs a good run down with Smooth Away.  An added benefit is that Smooth Away is an excellent exfoliator (it is essentially nothing more than a very fine grit sandpaper), and your self tanner should work pretty nicely after a Smooth Away session.

Will I buy it again?  Probably not.  There *could* be an occasion where I might like to use it to extend my shaving (camping trip, maybe?), but unless that comes around, I am going to stick with my razor.

If you want to try it, you can get it online here – it will cost you a total of $21.98 ($14.99 plus shipping and handling) for a package that includes 4 of each of the two sizes of Smooth Away pads.

How did your experience with Smooth Away compare to mine? Let me know down below.