When I have my shoulders and back waxed professionally it's great for about 24 hours.
After that the waxed area turns red all over, and then I get a large number of red lumps which after a day become whitehead spots. A day or so after that some of them go but others get worse. All in all I have spots for about 7-10 days, and by the time I get back to normal again the hairs ahve started growing back.

I try to keep the area clean by showering twice a day and exfoliating every other day. I also apply tea tree oil after washing, but nothing has really made a dramatic improvement, it's mainly just made it slightly less bad. What else can I do to reduce the effects? If I cut the hairs so that they are relatively short when I get waxed, will this improve my chances of not getting the spots?

A friend suggested it might be the wax clogging the skin up, even though i wash (he says it's hard to remove the wax). Would sugaring be better if this is the case?
Any ideas?

Cheers

Hey Yapp:

Sounds as thro as you ave a bit of a bugger there?

I believe you have more than one thing aggravating your back.

First I think the quickness of the red spots are hairs that have broken off just below the skin line and not removed. This will cause a quick ingrown.
Maybe your skin has a reaction to the wax?
Usual you wait a few days to a week before you want to exfoilate. What type of exfoilate are you using and how are you exfoilating?
Maybe sugaring would help if your alergic to wax?
Have you through about trying a Epilator? They have come a long way over the years and some models work very well.
Or maybe get laser or electrosis for a perm solution?

It sounds like one of two things happening here.

First is that men typically will break out on their back, it has something to do with sweat glands being more abundant there.
A great solution for this is Tend Skin.....even though it will burn like hell the first time you use it, you will get used to it and it will help to clean out those pores and prevent the spots from worsening, in fact it will help them to heal in a day or so.....the stuff is really great.

Second is that your practitioner is either breaking the hairs off instead of getting the roots out or that they didn't prepare your skin properly.
Depending on what type of wax they used, they should either have cleansed the skin and powdered lightly or oiled lightly. Did they do either of those things after cleansing really well?
I suspect not. I hear a lot from new clients that the places they've been to before do not cleanse the skin of impurities before waxing. This will cause the impurities to be left behind to cause pustules after the hair is removed or broken off.
Send me a private message so we can get more info as I don't check in here very often anymore, got too busy after taking the electrolysis course.

hi there ive experienced the same problem.
i shower like 2 - 3 times a day, keep cool nad apply my tea tree ltions etc.. but the pimples are getting worse.
i must have like 2-39000 on my back and shoulders.
All this started to happen just 24 hrs after the waxing, now its day 2 and my back looks atrocious! I leave for a holiday in 4 days and know that my time now will be spent earing a tshirt..lol.

what are some quick methods of getting rid of this embarrassing mess???

im from australia.