Hi! I’m Andrea James. I’m a Los Angeles-based writer and activist who wrote commercials at a major agency for many years.
Working in advertising taught me all the tricks of the trade, so when I was researching hair removal (I was just a bit on the fuzzy side), I couldn’t believe all the deceptive advertising I saw, some of it quite illegal. As I looked into it more and more, I got embroiled in the whole little soap opera. My research happened to begin in 1995, just as the first laser was cleared by FDA. When I got a look at the medical data and compared it to overblown claims being made by the manufacturers, I started doing more digging.
This ran me afoul of some of the shady characters doing the deceptive claims. They started getting nasty with me when I put up information exposing their fraudulent claims. Then one of them decided to put up a sales site designed as a consumer site. That was it. If that’s how they want to play, I decided I’ll put up a real consumer site! And here it is. What started off as a little project has turned into a huge website with hundreds of pages. Hair removal is much more complicated than it seems at first!
It makes me mad to see scam artists who prey on those who are desperate to get rid of unwanted hair: women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, people with tumors or hormone imbalances, people on medications with hair growth as a side effect, those whose excess hair makes them too embarrassed to date or go to the beach. Even those who just don’t like having unwanted hair don’t deserve to get ripped off by quacks. Along the way, I’ve received great help from lots of consumers and professionals. Luckily, there’s only a handful of scam artists and quacks. I’m happy to announce we outnumber them by a huge margin!
I hope you’ll consider helping out however you can. If everyone does just a little, we can all make a difference!
If you’d like to learn more about me and my work, please visit andreajames.com.