Re: how/why does plucking or tweezing make facial hair thicker? i dont get it...

> basically i just wondered how or why
> plucking my facial hair in certain areas
> such as the chin makes it grow back thicker?
> the thing is i thought waxing,plucking and
> threading all did pretty much the same thing
> because they all lift hair from the root as
> opposed to shaving or using depilatory cream.
> so i dont undertand why with waxing the hair
> comes back softer where as tweezing some hairs
> out make them thicker.

Plucking and threading do exactly the same thing. They select individual hairs and pull them out by the root. That can stimulate the follicle of a hair that's not actually in the growing phase into fresh growth. It can also, with repeated pluckings of hair from the same follicle, eventually distort the follicle so that the hair grows at an odd angle and becomes more noticeable.

Waxing is much the same, but with the difference that while with plucking or threading you normally remove just the prominent hairs which are already coarse and leave the finer, shorter, colorless hairs, when you wax, you pull out the lot and that can stimulate a lot of the hair into a regrowth phase at once.

Now, it's perfectly true that if you wax very fine hair that's not got any hormone stimulation to make it grow again, you may eventually weaken the roots and reduce or even eliminate the hair growth. But if you wax hair growth in areas that have hormonal stimulation for hair growth and where you already have hair that's been hormonally stimulated (obvious signs being that it's colored and/or coarse, rather than very fine and clear) what happens is that you actually stimulate the grwoth.

It may be that some of the hair you pluck is breaking off, rather than coming out by the root.

If you want to avoid an increase in growth, then you'd be better steering clear of waxing, plucking and shaving if you're already showing evidence of some coarse bristly hair which indicates hormonal stimulation which is very common on the chin and upper lip areas.

I favor shaving, myself -- not everyone's choice, I know, but it works brilliantly for me.

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