My Underarm Makeover
By Glinda
OK, I didn’t really get one, nor did I need one.
But this is what happens when you send your husband to buy you some deoderant. He gets you the wrong kind. Oh sure, he got the right brand, but he bought me Dove’s brand new Ultimate Stay Smooth Antiperspirant and Deodorant. Dove claims that this stuff:
Minimizes the visual appearance of hair over time.
This unique anti-perspirant formula contains Pro-Epil Complex with natural extracts and Dove 1/4 translucent moisturizers.
From first use, it smoothes and conditions your underarm skin.
Within weeks, you’ll start to notice that your underarm hair feels soft, fine, and easy to remove.
Over time, your underarm hair will look and feel less noticeable.
I have seen mutterings around the internets about this deodorant, actually, and most of them were outraged. How dare Dove put out a product designed to make women feel like their armpits are ugly! Just what the world needs, a deodorant that makes your underarms pretty! Armageddon!
While I didn’t really feel one way or the other about the deodorant, I could see where Dove was coming from. Apparently they designed the product because a majority of women felt that their armpits didn’t look all that great, and were self-conscious about them, especially when sleeveless shirts.
Is this some sort of self-esteem epidemic?
I don’t know, it might be. Then again, maybe not.
I figure that for this particular product, the consumer will speak with their dollars and if nobody really cares about what their armpits look like, then this product will slowly fade away.
I had zero expectations about this deodorant, but darn it all if I wasn’t completely taken aback by the reduction of my armpit stubble. Listen, we know each other well enough by now that I can discuss my armpit stubble with you, right? Where there was once sharp, dark, and spiky suddenly became wispy and barely noticeable. It is up for debate as to the smoothness of my underarms as I’m not the type of person to regularly check, but I suppose it looks better simply by way of the hairs being less noticeable.
Now, I don’t know exactly what is in this “Pro-Epil Complex” and I probably don’t want to, but I have to admit, this product does what it says it does.
April 27th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Whoa! I’m amazed! I may have to try this. Because while I don’t think my armpits are ugly, necessarily, I AM lazy and would love to not have to shave as much. Plus it really hurts to shave my armpits less than like every four days. TMI.
April 27th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Now if they would just make a damn unscented one. I hate scented deodorant and it is getting harder and harder to find one.
I’m not feeling cranky, why do you ask?
April 27th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Sounds tempting, but creepy and potentially harmful. I try not to use products that are THAT new to the market and cause such physiological changes. How do we know those products aren’t harmful before they have passed the test of time? I detest shaving, but we do know that a razor will never cause a long-term skin problem, nor a disease, nor cancer.
April 27th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
@Jen- Oh, there’s really no such thing as TMI here at Manolo Beauty!
@Klee- Tom’s of Maine makes some OK unscented ones, although they seem to work differently on different people. It’s either love or hate.
@wildflower- Oh I hear you! I never would have bought it myself, but had to put it up here that it does actually work. Once I ran out, I went back to my regular kind.
April 27th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
“I have seen mutterings around the internets about this deodorant, actually, and most of them were outraged….”
When I read this I expected the next part to be something like “What kind of creepy body-altering chemicals are they putting in this stuff? Do they expect us to blindly slather this on a tender, porous area just because some marketing genius is ringing yet another set of changes on that hoary old standard ‘create a need where none existed before’? ”
To me this sounds like a cancer study waiting to happen. I find that much more outrageous even than whipping up women’s body-image issues to sell more product.
April 28th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Well, and I DO have to admit that this seems to have happened with Aveeno’s give-you-less-hair stuff from a few years ago. Their shave gel worked meh but their lotion worked GREAT! Then it got really hard to find, and then there was the less-effective new formula. So one presumes that using chemistry to fight hairiness does not always work out well for surrounding tissue.
April 28th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
@Klee Oh, totally going to echo your hatred of scented deodorant! You know what I want my armpits to smell like? *Nothing.* Hence the use of deodorant in the first place! I am a perfume junkie, and I spend way too much on my perfumes to have the whole effect ruined by some corporate entity that thinks my armpits should smell like a floral arrangement, or baby powder, or whatever.
April 29th, 2011 at 4:16 am
I judge a product by its advertisements. That might sound simpleminded, but let me assure you, more money than most of us see in a lifetime is spent on creating those ads, and you can watch and learn all you need to know.
The ad I keep seeing for this product features a lovely dark haired woman of indiscernible ethic origin (I’m told this is vital for “women’s hygiene products”–no sweaty, hairy blondes ever) who is stammering/blubbering/gesticulating and grimacing about dancing and becoming sweaty, and realizing that armpits also have hair. Speaks. In. Breathy. Sentence. Fragments. Only. Rolls. Eyes. Shakes. Sounds. Whiny. Took me a while to understand the horror she survived–which was that her dance partner might see.
So, the product causes narcissistic delusion and neurological damage. Razor and plain old plain old for me, then.
April 29th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
re: unscented deodorants. I wear the Almay stuff —
http://www.amazon.com/Almay-Anti-Perspirant-Deodorant-Clear-Fragrance/dp/B00008O2X5/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1304117839&sr=8-3
and have for years. LOVE it. It will be pried from my cold dead hands.