Nair.

"If you're going to use a chemical depilatory like Nair, you've got to be very strict on following the instructions because if you leave it on the skin too long it's going to cause a miserable rash. Make sure you follow the directions, make sure you rinse it off after the allotted time, and that you don't come in with a bunch of exfoliants after using it. An advantage of doing a chemical depilatory over shaving is that chemical depilatories dissolve the hair as opposed to that sharp cut you get when shaving, so they get you a closer shave without the risks of a true close shave which puts you at risk for ingrown hairs. You'll get closer than shaving could, but it doesn't leave that sharp edge on the hair so it's not likely to grow back and cause ingrown hairs."

"Nair is a brand name of chemical depilatories. These products work to allow you to remove unwanted hair essentially by the same mechanism: they contain chemicals that dissolve disulfide bonds in the keratin proteins in the hair strands, and once they work their magic on the unwanted hair shaft, you can just wipe that dissolved hair away and your skin is hairless. It is not permanent; the hair will grow back. In contrast to shaving, hair removal cream, once it removes the hair, will take a little bit longer for the hair to grow back because the hair removal cream dissolves the hair a little bit below the surface of the skin, kind of gets down into the pore, so it takes a little bit more time for it to be visible to your eye."

"Hair removal creams like Nair work by using chemicals that dissolve the disulfide bonds in the keratin proteins in the hair strands, and once they work their magic on the unwanted hair shaft you can just wipe that dissolved hair away. Compared to shaving, it takes a little bit longer for the hair to grow back because the cream dissolves the hair a little bit below the surface of the skin, getting down into the pore. Another advantage is the way the hair feels when it's growing back. When you shave you get a blunt cut so you get stubble with that rough, horsehair feeling. But because chemical depilatories like Nair work to dissolve those disulfide bonds in the keratin proteins, there's more of a tapered, smoother end so you don't have that rough stubble. Chemical depilatories don't make you grow more hair or cause the hair to grow back thicker, darker, longer, or stronger because they're really just working at the skin surface and a little bit within the pore, not down to the root. And you're not going to cut yourself."

"Chemical depilatories like Nair work to dissolve those disulfide bonds in the keratin proteins, so there's more of a tapered smoother end so you don't have that rough stubble just like with shaving. Chemical depilatories don't make you grow more hair, they don't cause the hair to grow back thicker, darker, longer, stronger, none of that because they're really just working pretty much at the skin surface and a little bit within the pore. They don't get down to the root where the factors that work to grow hair are at play. You're not going to cut yourself, and shaving also leaves you more likely to get little bacteria introduced around the hair follicles, you get these pimple-like bumps called folliculitis, very annoying and very uncomfortable to deal with, especially in sensitive areas like the bikini area. That's not going to occur necessarily with a chemical depilatory because of the way it's dissolving the hair as opposed to actively cutting, which can have the bystandard cutting and nicking of the neighboring skin. Chemical depilatories don't really damage the hair shaft down below the surface of the skin, they don't fracture it, so you're less likely to get a hair that grows back kind of wonky."

"All of Nair's creams, lotions, etc. for hair removal all contain fragrance. Chemical depilatories are formulated at a very high pH and are quite caustic to your skin barrier. The enzymes that maintain your skin barrier require an acid pH, so putting something really basic like a chemical depilatory cream can really screw up pH, disrupt things for your skin barrier, lead to more irritation and transepidermal water loss. Brands like Nair don't want you to have irritation so they formulate products with moisturizing ingredients and soothing ingredients to help reduce that risk, but if used incorrectly or used to the wrong area they can be very disruptive to the skin barrier. If you're someone who has a skin condition where your skin barrier is impaired or the integrity of it is compromised, these may aggravate your underlying skin condition and probably are not a great idea. For example, atopic dermatitis, rosacea, or acne can have an impaired skin barrier, and if you're considering using these on your face, that's risky."

"When you're using Nair in the bikini area, while the product is incubating and going to work to dissolve the hairs, you have to be still. You can't be walking around. You need to be still because what will happen is the cream will transfer to other locations and can be really damaging. You don't want to get it on the mucosal surfaces in the genitalia, that's for sure. Where people go wrong and cause a lot of damage to their skin and end up getting irritant contact dermatitis is they either leave the product on too long or they don't rinse it off sufficiently, or it got transferred to maybe the neighboring area and they ended up with essentially a chemical burn."