By Jeanne Huff
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Good overview of options.
Full article

I hate the way the media has been bought out by the laser industry. This ridiculous article claims that "you won't find many people doing electrolysis these days" and even has the gall to state that the permanence of electrolysis is in question. Laser, of course, is presented as the quick and easy answer to everyone's problems.

My experience, of course, is that you find plenty of people doing electrolysis these days, a lot of whom are having to start all over with their hair removal process after laser failed to deliver what it promised. Electrolysis is permanent hair removal. Laser is not. I wish they'd stop trying to blur the lines.

I contacted Jeanne Huff after Andrea posted this article on hairtell. We e-mailed each other a couple of times. I basically pointed out the misinformation pieces of her article and then suggested that she could write another article about what modern electrolysis can do for those with unwanted hair - permanently.

She was very nice, but she was not interested. She probably thought I was just a biased electrologist protecting my turf and livihood.

If anyone would like to try and enlighten her so she could use the power of her pen to correct herself, you can reach her at: jmhuff@idahostatesman.com


Dee

That's the problem with any kind of media. They dutifully parrot whatever press release comes across the desk, never bothering to factcheck and make sure it's true. Even on the evening news, we see all kinds of garbage ("This new crab-shell supplement will make you lose weight with no exercise! Potatos cause cancer! Don't vaccinate your children!") that is misleading at best and dangerous at worst.

The laser industry has a huge amount of money and power, and it's obviously in their best interest to portray electrolysis as old-fashioned and slow. I've started to see a laser backlash happening, as people who rushed in to try the hot new thing are starting to have partial or complete regrowth, and turning to electrolysis to get it removed properly. Maybe this is the laser peoples' way of protecting their own turf.

Glad you guys a jumping in and writing to these journalists. There was a real howler last week in a Kansas paper that I didn't even cite-- it was recommending people go to several spam sites. A real mess.

And people say that Kevin Trudeau is a nut for saying that what is written in the papers and reported on TV is all bought and paid for, not unbiased presentation of researched fact.

The whole concerted media attack on electrolysis is just what you said, LASER's way of pre-emptive strikes against people who might do the proper research and find out that if you don't have money to gamble, you need to do electrolysis first and only, not if and only if you have first tried LASER and not received what you started out looking for (and was maybe overpromised about receiving)

They buy up all the favorable mention they want, and electrolysis practitioners are too disorganized to mount an effective counter attack. Then you have states that get moved to suddenly adopt new licensure laws, and they don't even have a school in their state where one could obtain recognized training under the new rules. What do you think that does to the availability of electrolysis in that state?

I wish also that ALL states would regulate electrolysis. I wanted to go to electrolysis school myself, but there aren't any in Texas. I'm already signed up for cosmetology school, and thought I'd learn electrolysis as well and eventually open my own clinic for transgendered people, offering permanent hair removal, hairstyling, skin care, and maybe permanent cosmetics. Alas, even permanent cosmetics are regulated here and I'd have to travel to New York or California to learn both electrolysis and the cosmetic work.

I really do believe there is a laser backlash. When it first came out, there was so much optimism (myself included) and a lot of people really jumped on the bandwagon. Thank god I didn't have the money, or I might have wasted even more than I did on it. As time has gone by, the enthusiasm as died down and there are a LOT of unhappy people. At this point, the general consensus in the other TG people that I know is that laser doesn't work and is a waste of time. So, people are flocking back to electrolysis.

One of the problems is that only a trans person who was connected to a community, and could find out about the journey of many people would ever find out that eventually, anyone who ever completed hair removal was forced to "finish off with electrolysis" or had done it all with electrolysis in the first place. There are new people undertaking this transformation every day who are doing it with nothing but what they bump into in the media and what ever the local service providers direct them towards. If one of your local service providers has a LASER link, you will be told to do LASER, and without filtering that for who was successful and who is getting no more work done, one can't know that no person starting transition in the 30's has ever been able to do complete beard removal via Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

I have one client who has only done electrolysis, and is done. Her friend laughed at her and did LASER, when her money was all used up, she went hairy for two years, and then saved enough to restart with electrolysis, but by then, she was already living full time, and could not devote as much time as she could have when she was still part time.

Then another one insists that LASER is the way to go even though she is still not finished after 6 years!

In my online support groups, I always see newbies starting out and telling us they're going to get laser hair removal on their face. Of course, the rest of us always tell them "don't do that!" but they never listen. "Oh, no, my skin therapist has the latest hair removal laser, it's way better than the old ones!" They spend 3 or 4 thousand dollars, laugh at us who still labor through electrolysis, and then turn up again a year later with complete regrowth. Sadder but wiser, they start all over again with electrolysis.

I, too, know of people who had laser, went full time, and then ended up with a complete beard. Not a good situation. My face has been basically hair free for years now (I only have a few touchups) thanks to electrolysis and yet the laser people go back again, again, and yet again in a fruitless search for hair removal.

$5,000 is enough for some men to get 50% to 75% of the hair on their face permanently removed if a person is doing that work with me