This post/question is addressed for those who feel dysphoria with body hair and shave.

In my case, because of western/north african genetics I have thick hair legs but also a pretty sensitive skin.

I have tested all sort of shaving machines and blades, and also shaving and moisturiser creams I could afford.

I have tried Gillete, Wilkinson in Venus and the Wilkinson equivalent variants and a lot of their shaving and aftershaving creams.

I have a limited budget for things but so far Jungle Culture blades have gave me the lower irritation combined with a crystal rock for hair removal in harder areas. This is used in combination with La Toja shaving cream and bodynatur Intensive Moistouriser.

Before that, I used Wilkinson Venus-equivqlent plus the other things. I am testing the Jungle Culture blades to see how it goes.

Until now, the situation still enforced me to shave every 2-3 weeks, as doing it with more frequency would end with a strong skin irritarion. The hair starts growing and, after a bit, this thick hair causes friction with the jeans and skin, the skin gets super irritated and needs time to heal.

Do you know something for a limited budget (lets say 10 euros or so) for after-shaving care that it could help me to shave with more frequency without that issue?

first pooost! welcome :D

also this is technically the first comment so i guess congrats to myself as well? 😅️

uhh for after-shaving care, i've always wanted to try out plant oil (e.g. linseed oil) but never got to it because i just don't need it so far. so idk whether that would actually work. i think that coconut fat could also work well. my aunt used to apply quark to (small) wounds and skin irritations, i'd say that it did work pretty well overall.

i am vegan, so i would say no to quark, but the coconut oil sounds like a nice idea. i know is also applied to skin irritation in tattoos so may actually work.

thx for the tip.

Yeah, I think you're going to need a multi faceted approach.

First, you may want to consider something other than shaving for your depilation. Sometimes a nair type depilatory can end up better for people of African descent. It's kinda hit or miss, but it can solve the irritation problem entirely as long as you aren't also sensitive to the product. Caveat is that to gain the reduced irritation vs shaving, you have to let it go a little longer between uses.

Razor wise, I think you've covered all the realistic options. A good gel based lubricant with ant of the modern multi blade heads is as good as it gets. The Venus in particular tends to work for most women most of the time. What you could add to the mix is a longer soak before shaving. Like men's facial hair, leg hair needs time to kinda soften up, which reduces irritation of the skin to at least a noticeable degree. That being said, if you haven't tried a standard safety razor, they can end up less irritating compared to the multi blade disposable head options.

Fwiw, I always saw best results on legs with Aveeno shave gel. It was also my default for my face when I still shaved, and even looking at a razor could irritate my skin. Dunno if you tried that brand or not.

Follow up care, I tend to favor simpler things as the go-to for sensitive skin. Aloe, cocoa butter, shea butter, vitamin-E, things like that alone or in combination.

Now, while I had fewer women under my care, and of those, women of African descent were only maybe half, and not all wanted/needed their legs shaved; the thing that tended to do best overall was aloe gel immediately after, followed by cocoa or Shea butter maybe an hour later.

But combination products did the job too, but focusing on main ingredients that have a proven track record is ideal. And, tbh, I tended to see more economical options with individual ingredients rather than a lotion containing them.

It also helps to refine technique. While I'm sure the basics are there, a lot of folk don't realize how much they tend to mis-angle and stutter start. See, if you start your stroke by moving backwards, then making the shave pass, you both align the hairs and minimize the scraping of the blades as they come in contact with the skin. When you make the blade forward motion first, the apex of the blades tends to kinda skip on a microscopic level, which both pulls the hair more and scrapes the skin worse.

Since the little backwards pull also serves to let you get the head of the razor flat against the skin, that cause if irritation is minimized too. Then, just never lift the blade until you're ready to clean the blades again. Make sure you're rinsing the blades clean every two to three passes, and making that backwards pull as you come back.

Applying your gel/cream/oil of choice in both directions is also helpful. Both against and with the direction of growth, when such exists. Like soaking, this helps prime individual hairs. It gets them in a state where they're both softer and the skin is fully lubricated. It's less effective the shorter the hair is, but it never gets to zero benefit.

Since technique is free, that's also the best place to start.

I might add that keeping the skin relatively taut helps as well. You don't want to stretch it, but the flatter the surface, the more even it is, the less chance the skin has to be scraped unevenly, which contributes to irritation.

I think that about covers what I can pull out of memory, without actually seeing and touching your skin to evaluate. There's always tiny adjustments possible, no matter how delicate the skin is.

Most of my patients were elderly, with the associated decrease in collagen making their skin not only more sensitive to razors, but thinner as well. To really maximize a reduction (oxymoron much there southsamurai?) it always took a solid visual and tactile examination of the skin. Went for men's faces, women's faces, and all kinds of genitals and armpits too. Even the occasional anus, though I drew the line with feeling those without gloves, which makes touch way less useful for shaving. That's actually one of the few things I miss about the job. Shaving is very calming and flow state inducing for me. Which is off topic, sorry.

But yeah, I think you gotta make small changes to everything rather than hoping one or two products will fix it.

That being said, if you haven't tried a standard safety razor, they can end up less irritating compared to the multi blade disposable head options.

jungle culture razors are safety razors. those are the ones i am starting to test.

nair type depilatory

welp, it does not really work with very thick hair and finishes burning my skin. i already tried in my face in the past and finishes being super expensive

Aveeno shave gel

idk if this brand is sold in the Canary Islands. i can check in stores though or trying to buy it online. sadly we have our own customs so it would need to pass through there even for EU shipping

When you make the blade forward motion first, the apex of the blades tends to kinda skip on a microscopic level, which both pulls the hair more and scrapes the skin worse.

in my case, i have tried both options without success. with the safety razor i am only using one-sided movement to avoid passing too many times too.

I might add that keeping the skin relatively taut helps as well. You don't want to stretch it, but the flatter the surface, the more even it is, the less chance the skin has to be scraped unevenly, which contributes to irritation.

yeah, i try to keep skin flat to avoid those issues. specially when i shave areas of the skin with folds or that are pliable. is very easy to cut my skin and i always had issues with notebooks in schools while taking them out of the backpack

The Venus in particular tends to work for most women most of the time.

Not going to remove this comment because it has useful advice, we could see you are trying so genuinely thanks for that, and we want to help guide rather than punish, but this is the kind of generalization we wanted to avoid with what we wrote in the rules.

There may be non-women with similar experiences and so it is both possible to cause dysphoria with this kind of comment, and difficult to know what is meant by it.

Please try to avoid such generalisations in the future, and try to explain better what you mean. Like, do you mean those who's primary sex hormone is estrogen typically tending to have thinner skin, or what?

Thanks for reading and hopefully understanding :)

Is Nair still a thing? Its not that expensive and Ive used it in the past. No shave irritation if you dont have to shave. Wax is the other option, but likely a tad bit more expensive.

nair is expensive to me and wax (everything that includes pulling) causes even more irritation

I'm sorry. I hope you find something else helpful

I've struggled with shaving too, and have always hated it.

I've used veet which works well, but there's a pretty small margin of error and I'd always burn myself.

The only thing I've found that gives a decent shave without cutting me or irritating the skin is the philips oneblade. The blade replacements are a bit expensive, but you can use them for way longer than they say so it's not that bad. I shave with it dry and get basically no irritation, when safety razors or foil electric razors would always fuck up my skin.

I've never had much luck with shaving comfort in general. My hair is too thick and curly and so I end up with lots of ingrowns and razor bumps as the hair grows back out, so I bought an IPL gun since I have dark hair and light skin. I've eliminated almost all of the dark hair and what hair is left is very light and thin. I was most successful with leg hair. I also had some luck with arms, but I have a lot more freckles there and so it's more difficult as it hurts much more or I have to reduce intensity and it's less effective. I also didn't have much luck with facial hair. I think because it's too deeply rooted as the hair grows at a steep angle. I always used an electric razor to avoid skin tight shaves so the skin didn't have time to close up over it. But then it's not as smooth, so not good for my dysphoria. For the face, I have done some electrolysis, but need to do a little more one of these days.