Increasing ingrowns all over legs.

[trackies]

I have always had very little body hair & therefore have never shaved (I only have a light and barely visible fuzz on my legs).  However, in the past year, I've accumulated a LOT of ingrown hair on my legs.  Worst still, they're mainly in areas I cannot reach (to tweeze): the back of my calves, under my thighs, towards the bottom of my shins & a LOT on the side of my calves. The ingrown hair has also been increasing over the past year, and my legs feel prickly when I brush my fingers over the affected areas.  Sometimes they swell, become red & itchy.

I'm not very flexible, and it's virtually impossible for me to contort my body/legs so that I can tweeze the hair out.  Even still, there are simply too many ingrowns for me to remove, unless I kept at it for weeks. I exfoliate every second day with an exfoliation gel, and every weekend with a rough exfoliation sponge, but nothing seems to work!

I don't know what to do and am becoming increasingly embarrassed about my legs, as the ingrowns are becoming more and more visible in the light.  In fact, the ingrowns are MORE visible than my actual hair.  Is this normal? Should I be exfoliating every day?  Should I be rougher in my exfoliation?  Should I be applying some sort of ointment or oil?  I keep hoping that they'll just grow out, but they only accumulate.  Usually this is a result of hair removal -- shaving or waxing -- but I don't do touch the hair on my legs.  Please help. :(