An Iraqi perspective on the newest fad in laser hair removal
The beauty industry is enormous and incredibly popular in the Middle East. When I lived in Beirut – writes our Contributing Editor, Sophia Smith Galer, in her summary of an article from Raseef22 by Benin Elias – I’ll never forget seeing my first plastic surgery loan, proudly advertised by a bank on the side of the road. But what happens when cheap at-home providers bend the rules?
Raseef22 is a marvellous independent media network based in Beirut. (Its editor is part of Translator’s advisory group). This investigation is from their wider project Mish ‘Al-Hamish (“Not on the margin”), a popular, educative column that sheds light on sexual and reproductive rights in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.
The piece begins with the story of a 32-year-old woman from Najaf in central Iraq, who saw an advertisement on Facebook for a women’s group that offered laser hair removal at home. This was compelling for Reem (a pseudonym), who could find it challenging going to beauty salons to get the same procedure; she told Raseef22 that her husband and family usually prevented her from going to these salons because of fears that staff would place cameras in the salon and film naked women and girls.
It’s not clear from the piece whether this was the fee for total hair removal, or per session, but Reem said it was 15,000 Iraqi Dinars, which is about $10, to remove the hair from “sensitive areas” (presumably her bikini line). Either way, this is extremely cheap, and four months after going through the sessions, she had intense itching, redness, and what she described as warts. A gynaecologist later told her she would need several months of treatment to remove them, including yet another kind of laser removal on the skin.
Raseef22 reports that hundreds of unlicensed beauty salons like this appear to be spreading in Iraq without official oversight. Since 2023, a committee formed by the Iraqi Council of Ministers has been investigating unlicensed health and beauty centers; after their first year, the Ministry of Health published a list of 72 centers which had been reported for violations which they requested to be shut down. But this is unlikely to be a significant portion of the number of actual centers that are operating without a licence.
In July 2024, Majid Shankali, who is the head of the Parliamentary Committee for the Environment and Health, said that between 900 and 1000 centers compared to about 100 licensed beauty centers.
Another Najaf resident, Najla, had to postpone her wedding over laser hair removal gone wrong. Her skin was left peeling and disfigured, and she told Raseef22 that some cream the salon owner gave her afterwards to try and treat it ended up burning her. She has been housebound for a month; “I don’t leave my room. I can’t stop holding my thighs apart all the time.”
Iraq’s healthcare system is beginning to feel the weight of these salons’ misdemeanours. Dr Nour Ali, a gynecologist, said that she is receiving visits at the hospital and her private clinic for cases in which women appear to have skin deformities, burns and infections following unlicensed hair removal procedures. Her advice? “Anyone who wishes to undergo a laser session must consult a doctor before proceeding to determine their skin type and the number of sessions required. They must also have experience and knowledge of how to use the laser device and sterilisation.”
Haya Taleb, a laser specialist who works for a licensed center with doctors’ supervision, added that it wasn’t just physical trauma women might suffer, but psychological too – I can believe that from Najla’s testimony. Women from poorer areas are far more likely to go to unlicensed centers too, exacerbating the problem because they may not be able to access quick medical support when they need to.
The amount of sterilisation and good practice that is involved in laser hair removal means that the experience should feel slightly medical; here in London, I remember being asked to fill in a ridiculously long medical questionnaire, and the presence of a lot of wipes, sunglasses to shield my eyes from the laser, and hygienic garments to put on. In this piece, Taleb added that different hair – thick, fine, white – each merits different approaches. Laser hair removal is an art and a science – which is exactly why licensed beauty centers normally charge a lot for it.
But with beauty standards and societal norms the way they are, it sounds like many in Iraq are being pressured into accepting low rates, and persuaded by the privacy an at-home setting seems to assure. However, just as the headline suggested, it ends up becoming a far higher price to pay.
Original article (“جلسات ليزر في المنزل… جلسات ليزر في المنزل… “التجميل” الرخيص مادياً والمكلف صحياً بلا رقيب في العراق,”/“Home laser hair removal without oversight in Iraq: cheap for your wallet, but expensive for your health”) by Benin Elias, first published in Arabic on 2 June 2025.
It’s available here.
Raseef22 is an independent media platform based in Beirut, Lebanon.
