Body Hair Removal Cream
NASC 121-001 Yimeng Wang
These years, people are paying more attention on their appearances. Big evidence is that women tend to be more careful with body hair. The society nowadays has a value that it’s not polite for women to show their body hair in public. As a result, women have to shave before they go out. Since there’s the demand, many ways for shaving have been invented. The most common way is to use a razor. But since it’s a little complicated, and not that convenient to use, the body hair removal cream has been invented. I have been using this cream for couple of weeks. One thing I found interesting is that there is always a bold sentence on the product said that “don’t leave the product longer than 10 minutes”. I can’t help asking why?
After checking the ingredient table on the product, I found out that the hair removal creams are mainly alkaline chemicals such as sodium calcium, titanium dioxide and calcium thioglycolate. These alkaline chemicals are used to dissolve the protein structure of the hair, which can make the hair easily be wiped off. Take keratin, as an example of the proteins in hair. The alkaline chemicals can destroy the chemical structure of keratin, and in that way weaken the root of your skin, which as a result makes the hair easily to fall off.
Most of the time, there is always a wired smell in hair removal creams. That smell owes to the combination of calcium thioglycolate and sodium hydroxide. When the chemicals react with the proteins, they break down their own structures and release stronger smell. Moreover, there are some creams that have been added to sulfur scent chemicals, which will release sulfur smell when reacting with hair.
This kind of product is 100% artificial and non-natural mixture. It’s just a simply mix of many different of chemicals, and the only thing that is natural in there is water. As a result, people are afraid of the side effect of all these mixture of chemicals. Most importantly, those alkaline chemicals get under your skin after they dissolve the hair. There are proteins like keratin in skin tissues too. It is of great chance that the cream will react with the skin tissues if leaving for a longer time, and damage your skin.
The inventors and the producers know about the facts about the hair removal cream, otherwise there won’t be those sentences on the product packing, warning people not to leave the cream for more than 10 minutes.
Environmentally speaking, as long as the alkaline chemicals or hair removal creams are used appropriately and disposed in the right place, they won’t cause significant damage on the environment. Most of the bad effects alkaline chemicals bring, such as corrosion of soil, are when they are using in industrial ways and have been disposed inappropriately. It’s hard to say this kind of product is really necessary. Shaving for women has a long history. There were records for women removing body hair in Egypt back to 3000BC. At that time, they used razors with home-mad depilatory creams, which mainly contain dangerous ingredients like arsenic and quicklime. During the recent decades, women can use razors, waxing, or laser to remove their body hair. But among all those methods, body hair removal cream seems to be the most convenient one. You just simply spread cream on your skin, wait for a couple of minutes, and then rub off the cream, simply but not painful at all. Instead of saying it’s irreplaceable or not, I prefer to say that it’s a good alternative.
References:
http://www.hintsandthings.com/bathroom/hairremoval.htm

http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/beauty/hair-removal/hair-removal-creams3.htm

http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm048995.htm

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/PostmarketDrugSafetyInformationforPatientsandProviders/DrugSafetyInformationforHeathcareProfessionals/PublicHealthAdvisories/ucm054718.htm

http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/beauty/hair-removal/hair-removal-creams-smell.htm

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-14/features/sc-fash-0913-shaving-20100913_1_shaving-strip-hair-body