Do you use an electric shaver or regular razor on your bikini area?

[Southern*Girl]

If you don't mind sharing, what is your routine for grooming "down there"? If you use a razor, what kind do you use? If you use an electric shaver, which do you think is the best (trimmer and shaver)? And exactly what do you all do, do you trim the hair and shave the sides? What do you trim with? Shaving seems to irritate me, no matter what, I wish I could find a better way, but I'm not sure about waxing yet! Thank you for any tips!!

[surrealmeal]

Hi Southern Girl,
I simply cannot shave my bikini area with a regular razor. It breaks me out horribly no matter how new the razor is, how nice the shaving creme is, or how long I let the hair soak in a bath before shaving. I've tried everything. I thought of waxing but didn't want to have to wait for weeks to let the hair grow out.

I finally just bought a little electric shaving kit from Wal-Mart. It's excellent. It's called the Remington Deluxe PG200 Personal Groomer. I bought it for about $19, but I just checked the Wal-mart website, and they now have it on sale for $15. It has a few attachments including a trimmer, ear/nose trimmer, and shaver.

I sometimes sprinkle a little bit of baby powder on top of where I'm going to shave because it makes the trimmer move across the skin much more smoothly. First I use the trimmer attachment to shave up the sides of my bikini line, and then on and around the lips. It works better and gets a closer trim if you pull the skin taut. I usually just leave a little "landing strip" but sometimes just shave around the lips, leaving my natural triangle of pubes intact.

The trimmer gets the hair really short, but not quite smooth. So then I go over the area with the eletric shaving attachment. I have this technique of gently pinching the area I'm shaving with my left hand while going over it with the electric razor with my right hand. Pinching forces the hair to stick straight up, giving a much closer shave. It gets me quite smooth. (If you don't quite get what I'm saying about pinching the skin, try this right now: With your thumb and forefinger, gently pinch some of the skin on your arm while looking closely at it. See how the hair raises? Yeah, you get it.)

Exfoliate gently every time you shower to prevent ingrown hairs. I also find that keeping the area dry with a bit of baby powder helps prevent zits/ingrowns. It seems that the oil that would normally be going to the hair has nowhere to go, so it's more prone to cause little zits.

Hope I've helped and if you have any questions, just ask!

[just_imagine]

I love getting waxed, but lately I've found it really hard to let myself grow out for 4 wks to get it done again... so I've been improvising. Using regular razors on my pubic area is killer for me, so I've been using an electric one made for women, I think it's called Lady Shave by Phillips. It's kinda old, I got it for Christmas maybe 4 years ago...so I should maybe invest in something new. But it works alright. Like the poster above said, pulling the skin taut makes it a lot closer shave! I do that and it helps a lot.

I shave everything but a little landing strip, for now... until I get the patience to grow it out and get waxed again. Nothing is as smooth as waxing!

Another trick I've discovered for irritation is applying a 0.5% hydrocortisone cream after. I have a little tube of cream called Cortef that I've used for eczema on my arms before. One day I experimented with it down there cuz I'd given myself a really bad shave and I was sooo bumpy and red, it looked nasty... but after like 15 mins of applying the cream it looked 90% better!! I was so happy. So now I use it when I run into "difficulties"!