*This* is the secret to preventing ingrown hairs…down there

It’s the middle of the summer, which inevitably means you’re in and out of a swimsuit doing your typical #99DaysofSummer activities—and life’s fab. But then, something can inevitably happen: You look down at your bikini line and see one of those pesky ingrown hairs staring up at you. Ugh—ouch.

Ingrowns happen when the end of the hair doesn’t fully make its way out of the follicle, and instead curls back and gets trapped, often times under dead skin. The hair can get inflamed and even times infected, which means that it’s accompanied by a painful bump.

Regardless of your preferred method of bikini line maintenance (one of our editors is veryanti-shaving, for what it’s worth), you can be prone to these if you’re not totally exfoliating the area after you remove hair. As it happens, the same way that you slough away dead skin from your face and body, so too, should you do the same to the bikini region.

You can do this with a peel pad that’s commonly soaked in an alpha-hydroxy acid solution…or via an age-old technique: dry brushing. In a recent article on Elle UK,  the latter was one of the main secrets to avoiding ingrowns anywhere on the body; however, it can be particularly helpful on the bikini line where these tend to be more common. “As we grow older, our skin becomes less efficient at shedding layers of dead skin cells,” says Katie Neal, body and skin-care expert at Mio, a skin-care brand. “But dry body brushing is fantastic at exfoliating these dead skin cells away.”

Doing the old-school method of taking a dry brush and moving it in strokes towards your heart not only leaves your limbs and bikini area smooth, but it also helps the skin be better able to absorb body creams and serums—which can also help your cause in preventing ingrown hairs from happening in the first place. Win-win.

Now to show it off—here are uber-cute gingham swimsuits and 16 stylish swimsuits for staying active.