Tweezing or Threading

Tweezing is not only a painful option, but also an extremely time-consuming one. It is OK for occasional stray hairs or very small areas (think eyebrows), but it is not the best for large areas or areas with dense hair growth. Tweezing works virtually the same way as waxing—by pulling the hair out from the root—which means the effects last far longer than shaving. Some women worry that tweezing will increase the growth or make the texture of the hair heavier, but it won’t. If plucking (or waxing and shaving) altered hair growth, we would all have bushy eyebrows! Actually, pulling out hair can eventually shut down the hair follicle by causing repeated shock and injury, though this takes a very, very long time. For the most part, any texture change is a result of the initial re-growth phase, when the hair reemerges from the pore.

Threading is a Middle Eastern technique that plucks hair from the root by using a twisted piece of thread. It is a fascinating process to watch. The person doing the treatment holds the thread in her mouth and hands and plucks away the hair faster than you can imagine, leaving the area smoother then you could do on your own with a tweezer. However, thread­ing has no benefit over and above tweezing in terms of regrowth. All threading does is yank out a hair, the same thing that tweezing does.

Updated: September 28, 2015 — 9:13 am