Wax for PCOS Hair Removal: The Story Behind Crybaby Wax

I was 16 the first time I waxed my face and neck.

It was the week before prom. My hair was going up, my dress was strapless, and the secret I had been hiding since middle school was about to be on display.

I could grow a full beard.

I didn't know what PCOS was. I didn't know it had a name. All I knew was that I needed it gone before my date saw it.

I went to the drugstore and bought the only thing I could find that I thought would work: a box of wax strips, the kind you warm between your hands. I locked the bathroom door, pressed them on, and pulled with all my might.

The next day my neck and lower face were covered in what looked like acne. Every empty follicle had clogged and inflamed overnight. The hair the wax couldn't remove taunted me.

I plucked what I could with tweezers, caked on makeup, and went to prom looking, in my own mind, like a teenager who had wrecked her face the day before the most important night of high school.

That bathroom was the first iteration of a cycle I would live in for the next 15 years.

Chapter 02, The DiagnosisA 10-Year Wait for a Diagnosis

I did not know I had PCOS until I was 31.

In the years between, I shaved my face twice a day. I plucked at night, late, in college dorm room with so my roommate wouldn't see what I was doing. I broke out constantly, not from acne, but from hair that snapped off below the skin and from peeling, irritated skin from shaving. My periods were never on a calendar anyone could read. I would go up to 95 days without one.

I saw three different OBGYNs. Bloodwork came back with elevated testosterone every time. None of them flagged it as high enough to warrant a workup. I was told to track my cycle and come back or that it was excessive stress . I was told some women just have more body hair than others, as if I had been describing a few stray chin hairs and not a beard I shaved every morning before work.

It took me crying in an exam room, telling my 4th OB-GYN that I genuinely did not know what was happening to my own body, to get a transvaginal ultrasound.

When I received the printout, I could see my left ovary was visibly covered in cysts. I left with a prescription and a plan. The medication eventually evened out my cycle, but it did absolutely nothing for the hair.

Chapter 03, The BackfireWhy did laser make my hair growth worse?

After the diagnosis, I went looking for a permanent answer to get rid of the facial hair.

I bought the most advanced at-home IPL device on the market at the time. It did less than nothing. The device wasn't powerful enough to make a dent in PCOS-driven follicle activity. After months of obediently following a schedule, I had nothing to show for it but a drawer full of disposable cartridges.

So I researched other options. Electrolysis was an option, but the cost and the estimated time to address the hair I have was astronomical.

As a last resort, I signed up for a year of professional laser hair removal. I researched lasers and clinics obsessively. I picked a clinic with a reputation for treating women with PCOS. I asked about wavelengths, about settings, about what to expect. I went in for treatment after treatment and paid for the package up front. At the end of the year, it had not only failed to reduce the hair, it had triggered paradoxical hair growth.

After a year of painful, expensive treatments, I had more hair on my face than when I started. A mix of white and dark, growing in like a prickly blanket every day across my chin, cheeks, and neck.

That was the moment I stopped trusting that anyone outside of me was going to fix this.

Chapter 04, The IdeaA Pandemic, 15 Years in Beauty, and an Idea

I had spent 15 years working for beauty brands by the time the pandemic hit. I knew the manufacturers. I knew the formulators. I knew which suppliers were doing real innovation work.

When the world locked down in 2020, I was alone with my thoughts and a long list of things I had always wanted to build. The one I kept coming back to was wax.

I had not waxed since I was 16. The drugstore bathroom story was vivid enough that I had spent a decade avoiding the entire category. But shaving and plucking weren't sustainable. Laser had failed me in the worst way it could fail anyone. I needed to know if waxing had gotten any better since the box I bought as a teenager, and if it hadn't, I wanted to know why.

I started talking to suppliers. I asked for samples. I read formulation documents. What I found was that waxing as a category had been almost completely asleep for two decades. The big brands were still selling the same harsh formulas they had been selling when I ripped my face off as a teenager. Pre-wax and post-wax care, where it existed at all, was an afterthought, full of synthetic fragrance and ingredients I would never put on my face on a normal day.

I lean clean in the rest of my life with my skincare, my food, and what I cook with at home. There was no reason wax should be the exception, and there was definitely no reason a category that women with PCOS quietly depend on should still be stuck in 2003.

Chapter 05, The BrandWhat I Built (and Why It's Different)

Two years of research. Hundreds of wax samples ripped off my own skin (and my husband's skin). Pre and post care formulas reworked until the ingredient deck looked like something I would actually put on my skin.

Crybaby Wax was born from this work.

Our hard waxes are professional-grade, synthetic, vegan and rosin-free. They contain fragrance. Read the formula warnings, patch test the intended area and check wax texture and temperature before use; no formula can guarantee irritation-free waxing.

The pre and post care lines are clean, multi-use, and built to actually treat the skin underneath the hair, not just degrease it for the next pull.

I built it for myself first. The 16-year-old me at the bathroom mirror. The 19-year-old me hiding in a dorm with tweezers. The 31-year-old me crying in front of an OBGYN. The 33-year-old me staring at a year of failed laser payments.

But I also built it for the licensed estheticians who have been working with the same harsh, slow, allergen-heavy product line for two decades and deserve better tools, and for every other person whose waxing horror story has nothing to do with PCOS at all.

Chapter 06, Just For YouWhat do I want you to know if you have PCOS?

Wax is not a cure for facial hair. I want to be honest about that up front. Nothing topical is going to undo what hormonal hair growth does to your face every day. The follicles are still there. The androgen response is still there. The condition is still there.

For me, finding a hard wax my skin tolerated meant more time without daily shaving. How long a result lasts varies; hair should be at least 1/4 inch and skin fully settled before another session.

I cannot fully describe what that meant for me the first time I lived it. No more turning my head away when someone reached up to touch my face. No more makeup that sat weirdly because the hair underneath was already growing back by the time I was applying it. No more shaving before work meetings. No more locked doors at night.

If you have spent years on the same cycle I was on, I want you to know two things.

First, you are not alone. About 1 in 10 women of reproductive age have PCOS, and a majority of them deal with hormonal facial hair at some point. That is millions of women, almost completely invisible in mainstream beauty.

There is also a growing infrastructure for PCOS that did not exist when I was 16. Organizations like PCOS Challenge run grants for women dealing with the same things I dealt with, including a Confidence Grant that funds hair and skin treatments specifically. If you are looking for community or support, those are good places to start. I make wax. They make sure no one with PCOS goes through this alone.

Second, there are options now that did not exist when I was 16, and at least one of them was built specifically with you in mind.

That is why Crybaby Wax exists.