Re: scared out of my mind.

A great deal depends on your current hormone levels and the extent to which your skin has been sensitized during fetal life to make it respond to testosterone in your bloodstream.

It is true that in SOME instances, where the skin isn't very sensitive to testosterone and levels of free testosterone in the bloodstream are in the normal female range, that plucking, waxing, mechanical epilation, threading etc. can actually lead to the hair growing back finer. However where the skin IS very sensitive to testosterone and where levels of free testosterone in the bloodstream are higher than the normal female range, then plucking, waxing, mechanical epilation, threading etc. can lead to a rush of testosterone-rich blood to the plucked area and a consequent increase in the growth of coarse hair.

Shaving does not and cannot increase hair growth or the coarseness of what grows. What shaving does is cut off the already "dead" end of the hair and because it transects the hair in a blunt cut the regrowth can feel bristly. Of course there are a great many people who shave hair who find that the hair that's shaved becomes coarser -- but it would have become coarser anyway, whether they'd shaved it or not. They actually started shaving BECAUSE the hair was in the process of becoming coarser and that process of becoming coarser simply continued. Tweet