To Wax or Not to Wax?

Call it willful blindness, but I hadn’t seen this 2007 article from the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal (Oxford University).  Here is an excerpt from Severe Complications of a ‘Brazilian’ Bikini Wax:

Waxing . . . is the most common method for extensive depilation, and complications include burns, mechanical folliculitis, infectious folliculitis, other infections of skin and soft tissues, and contact dermatitis and/or vulvitis. Removal of hair causes skin microtrauma, with inoculation of pathogens and subsequent mechanical spread of infection. A recent systematic review of surgical site infections found that shaving resulted in more infections than clipping, presumably because the skin was not breached with clippers. Infecting organisms can be from autoinoculation of skin or vaginal flora and group A streptococci are known to colonize the vagina. Infecting bacteria can include S. aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and other potential pathogens include human papilloma virus, molluscum contagiosum, dermatophytes (such as Trichophyton ton- surans) resulting in Majocchi granuloma, and more unusual fungi, such as Sporothrix schenckii, which has been reported following electrolysis.

Citations omitted.  Read the full article here.

-Bridget Crawford

image source: BroAndDonna via Flickr