Black Friday, Grey Monday

MAFS / Leg Hair Who Dis

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

Act One

The story opens with a washed-out woman in PJ’s lying prone on a blue-velvet sofa. She’s in her early thirties, greasy-scalped, riddled with PMS-bloat and the lingering scent of fried food. After a week of sensory overwhelm from parenting two small children, she’s numbing out with her current drug of choice; ’Married At First Sight UK’.

She gawps at the perfectly-preened humans on the programme and envies their complexions, their outfits, their way with eyeliner. In the frequent ad breaks, she flicks mindlessly on her phone, replying to WhatsApps, scrolling the news, the ‘Gram.

She slides her PJ bottoms up and observes the long dark hairs on her legs. You guys have got to go, she thinks. I don’t know why, and if I think about it too much, it all becomes completely absurd. But I can’t be bothered to think, so you’ve got to go. She doesn’t budge an inch, though, cos shaving is tedious and a bit sore. If you do it while the shower runs, you’re basically watching heating and water bills filter down the drain along with the soap suds. Do it with the shower off in a cold, tiled bathroom and you’re shivering, sliding the razor over goosebumps and ending up full of (Stevie) nicks. You can keep waxing’s name out your mouth, too. Fannying about warming the strips between your hands then ripping them off yourself? Gimme a break.

Like magic, on comes an advert for an at-home laser hair removal device. That’s it! That’s the answer to everything! She won’t be a tired, boring mum any more, but a stunning hairless wonder. She’ll have skin smoother than Usher’s vocals, year-round confidence to get her legs out, the world fawning at her feet.

Thumbs a-fury, Google offers a ‘sponsored’ link to Trustpilot, or an off-shoot thereof; the page looks the same. A sudden noise makes her pause the telly – is that a wakened child? No, just the house groaning after a long day. Telly back on to manipulators, drama-queens, sensitive souls and total mugs.

The product-review list offers something eye-catching – an IPL machine, promising salon-standard laser hair-removal. ‘Easy and painless’ is the bait, ‘straightforward returns’ is the hook and ‘half-price for Black Friday’ hauls her out of the water. She follows the hyperlink to the brand’s page; it’s not one she’s heard of before, but then she’s never bought an IPL machine. The product copy is well-written, the images are nice, the page is pink and cosy. Reviews by verified buyers sound legit, too – they don’t seem to have been written by one person, they rave about the thing and the results.

She gets a little buzz of excitement as she taps ‘Add to cart’. 2024 is going to be my year, she thinks. My bald-bodied, skin-smoother-than-Single-Malt-Scotch-year.

More attractive couples on the telly acting tense, cringe or unnecessary. More experts nodding thoughtfully, offering commentary you reckon they know is beneath their professional experience and intellect. More ‘bombshells’, more dinner party drama.

She eats it all up, half an eye on her soon-to-be purchase.

She heads to the payment section, chooses Apple Pay; once confirmed by Face ID, that’s it well and truly bought. She receives a confirmation email with a delivery tracking number, finishes the episode, goes to bed and passes out happy.

Act Two

The following Monday, she decides to check when the device will arrive and her new, improved life can begin. The tracking number states that the product has been dispatched from its processing facility – in a country very far away. Yikes. She hadn’t realised it wasn’t from a UK supplier. She gets a pang of guilt about air miles, her inadvertent contribution to the climate crisis.

Then she notices something about the confirmation email. Something a little… off about the way it’s worded. Don’t judge, you awful bastard, she thinks. So what if it’s not in keeping with the web copy? Maybe this person doesn’t write in native English. Does that impact their ability to convey the necessary information? Would you do any better if translating to another language, given that your best bet is beginner Spanish from Duolingo? No, no es bueno para mi.

For the rest of the day, she puts it to the back of her mind. At 11pm, she lies in bed, glued to her phone. She knows she should sleep, but the world’s information beckons. After the usual scrolls, something pulls her back to the confirmation email. It reveals that the product has landed and had been cleared, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, through customs. Cool.

She Googles the brand and frowns when only one search result comes up - the website from which she bought the product. Strange, she thinks. There are a lot more hits for a competitor brand, whose name differs… by one letter. Don’t judge, bastard. What do you know?

A creeping sense of dread as she clicks on the ‘competitor’ page to find it’s identical, from layout to copy, products and offers to reviews. She returns to the website on which she made the purchase and notices things she’d previously missed: strange phrasing in places. Missing sections. A convoluted returns policy, disguised behind claims of ‘Satisfaction Or Your Money Back’.

Fuck.

She retraces her virtual steps, realising that the Trustpilot ‘offshoot’ advertises the legitimate brand, but the hyperlink it provides leads to the dodgy one. She fleetingly wonders if it might all just be fine, then acknowledge that’s bollocks and it’s probably a scam. She consults a website that offers immediate analysis on whether a page is Phishy or not. The review? ‘Nothing to like’ and a specific rundown of why.

The Fear takes hold. She lies awake until gone 2am worrying. Will I get my money back? What do you think, bastard. Is there anything I can do? Not right now. She checks her banking app and is relieved to find no suspicious activity. If I report this and whoever’s behind this is a wrong ‘un, are they going to come after me? They’ve got my name and address…

Act Three

In the morning, she calls the bank. They inform her that in order for them to act, she needs to follow a procedure starting with contacting the seller and asking for a refund. She cancels the card linked to Apple Pay, initiates the iPhone software update she’s been ignoring for weeks. She spends the day gripped with remorse, dread and worry. If confronted with an accusation of false advertising and a refund request, they’d probably just ignore it, right? They wouldn’t get the huff, hunker down with the next shipment of illicit goods, turn up on my doorstep and set about me with one of their dodgy laser machines. That’d be such a faff for them. Right?

Aside from the fear-factor, she knows full-well that getting her money back is as likely as her cat spontaneously combusting (she don’t have a cat). Perhaps it’s quieter, easier and better to leave it, swallow the financial loss and learn from the experience. To blame consumerism, the patriarchy, PMS, Organised Crime Gangs. Blame her own shallow vanity, not doing her research first, needless spending.

One friend suggests she could hold off and see if the product ever turns up; best case scenario, it was made in the same factory as the legitimate ones and sold by a shifty but entrepreneurial sort. She nods along, privately thinking that unregulated lasers might not do the trick for #SelfCareSunday – she wants hair removal, not third-degree burns.

But she appreciates the optimism.

Less than a week after ordering, to her surprise, *the* package arrives. She open it with trepidation… and finds it all looks totally legit. Maybe her friend was right and a bright, hairless future awaits after all?

Time for a patch-test. She plugs in the device, reads the instructions… and learns you have to shave prior to use. By the time she’d done all that (shower off and shivering), she couldn’t figure out why she’d been so compelled to buy the fucking machine in the first place – the job was done. She steels herself, holds the window to her calf and presses Pulse. It emits a terrifyingly bright flash of light, accompanied by zero sensation and no obvious result days after.

The story closes with an ever-so-slightly less naive woman with stubbly legs and a stung wallet. But thankfully no OCG involvement to date.