notes on life : filed under TMI

A few months back, I was speaking to my lovely aesthetician about hormone changes I'd been experiencing, the downside  of which included sweating. Specifically, I explained that I was having a terrible time with sweating like an old goat and smelling like one too. 

I know, both gross and TMI, but I did title this post as such, and I have more to share, so stop reading if you must, and please don't judge if you continue. 

So my girl G responds to my above smelly goat comment with this shocker,

"I wax my underarms and I don't really have to wear deodorant." 

Which immediately had me thinking she was a lucky lady. She said she'd always waxed her underarms, (makes sense she's an aesthetician), but she decided to get laser hair removal and had to shave in between the treatments, (something about wax and laser doesn't work), which were almost two months apart. 

G went on to say that over the course of laser treatment, she began to notice that she both sweat more and smelled. Eventually she decided to ditch the laser treatments and went back to waxing. 

Makes sense, right? Waxing removes hair from the follicle, shaving is cutting, and laser is something else. 

A nice story for G, who then boldly offered,

Let me wax your underarms, on me, as a test. You'll see if you notice a difference and you'll let me know. 

Friends, I am here to tell you that she was right,(!!!), and it has sort of changed my life.

Firstly, when I sweat, I do not smell like an old goat anymore. After waxing, I can go 24 hours without any deodorant, and since waxing, I don't ever re-apply deodorant in a day, unless I've gone to spin. 

It's bad enough to wake up in the night overheated, even worse if you're also stinky. Nowadays I still wake up, sweaty even, but I'm not wishing for a shower, or taking a swipe of deodorant in the dead of the night. 

I've waxed for about three months now, and I've noticed the frequency/need of appointments has begun to decrease. There is less hair, (hurray!), and even when it grows back, (which it has to do so there's something for the wax to grab), I am just not the stinky beast I once was.

I know when it's time to go wax again because people are glancing at my hairy underarms, not because I can smell myself and think everyone else can too.

Edited to add: I went back and forth about publishing this post and in the end decided that if one person reads this and has a similar experience, then it was a good thing.