Typically I wax my legs approximately every three weeks.  This past weekend I was so busy at work that I did not have an opportunity to do my waxing.  Normally this would not be an issue…I would simply wax my legs next week.  Unfortunately, I need to wear a dress for an event tomorrow.  Naturally I found myself at home this evening with no wax in the house.  In desperation (I really did not want to shave) I turned to the internet to do a bit of research on sugaring.

A Middle-Eastern technique, sugaring is used for epillation (which refers to removing your hair at the root).  Similarly to waxing, the sugar is applied to the skin and pulled off, thus taking the hair with it.  Apparently there are two styles of sugaring mediums: Sugar Paste and Sugar Gel.  Unlike in waxing, Sugar Paste is rolled into a ball-like formation and then spread out over the area in the OPPOSITE direction of hair growth.  It is then pulled off in the direction of hair growth; no strips are required to do this.  Sugar Gel is more similar to waxing in that the sugar is applied via an applicator in the direction of the hair growth and is then pulled off, using a strip, in the opposite direction of the hair growth.  Although I attempted to make Sugar Paste I guess that the consistency was not quite right, because it was way too sticky to use without a strip.  Therefore I had no choice but to use my Sugar Gel like a wax (thankfully I did have waxing sticks and muslin strips in the house).

I did make this sugar recipe myself (see photo above); I have to assume that I would have had more luck with a professionally prepared sugaring solution.  Still, I have to say that I was not overly impressed.  Yes, I was able to remove about 90% of my hair in the end; however, the product was not easy to work with.  I found it to be something akin to a poor-quality honey wax.  I found that I needed to work over and over the same areas repeatedly in order to remove all of the hair.  I am a professional and I struggled with this method.  In the end, it took me roughly 4x as long to sugar my legs as it would have taken me to wax them.

I appreciate the fact that I was able to easily make a homemade wax-like solution in a pinch.  I appreciate the fact that the sugar was quite easy to clean up.  With that said, given my experience, I would not choose sugaring as my preferred method of hair removal if I had another option.