No, I haven’t been running around with a toy gun pretending to shoot aliens, I have been laid out on a bed having my face scorched.
The Process is called IPL – Intense Pulsed Light and it does clever stuff to hair follicles, hopefully resulting in me dramatically reducing my liquid foundation consumption by several litres a week.
Ultimately the goal is a fuzz free face. The challenge is that it hurts like hell, and to add insult to injury, I have to pay handsomely to the smiling keeper of the light for the privilege.
The charming smile and soothing voice of the IPL technician is clever tactic. It is used to ease me onto the bed, and allow her apply the mandatory eye shades, before letting rip with a device that I am sure would be classified as torture were I not there of my own volition.
Once settled and with the machine ready, there is the countdown…Three, Two, One, then a barely perceptible pause before the trigger is pulled. Actually, I’ve never seen the device that administers the blast, so I am not sure if there is a trigger. But I am guessing that any device capable of delivering a such an intensely searing blast of light, heat, and electricity deserves a trigger, and probably a bit of recoil too.
So I hear the “Three, Two, One….” and then the following sensation is not dissimilar to being stabbed fairly hard in the face by a row of about a thousand or so, just ever so slightly blunt pins, that have been superheated and connected to mains electricity. What happens next is the faint aroma of burning hair begins to gently fill my nostrils, just in time for the start of the next countdown….
After the first session I was pretty sure there was a significant improvement. Its too early to assess the effectiveness of todays session as my face is still red, sore, and tender to the touch, and I couldn’t be happier about it…..
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