Waxing is mass tweezing. Warm wax or a similar plastic adhesive is placed on the skin, left to cool and then peeled off. Sometimes gauze strips are placed on the soft wax to facilitate the peeling. The hair, which has become embedded in the wax, is pulled out, removing the hair.

Allergic reactions to the wax have been noted as well as skin sensitivity and irritation. In fact, all the negative things said about tweezing and plucking are magnified many times over with waxing.

Waxing the face can have unfortunate consequences. The fine vellus hairs become embedded in the wax and are removed along with the dark coarse hairs. Repeated waxing of this vellus hair causes it to coarsen and eventually grow into dark terminal hair. Since the face has a possible capacity of one to five thousand follicles per square inch of skin, you could compound a relatively small problem into a real nightmare.

Since waxing does not destroy the papilla, it is not a permanent form of hair removal. However, there are a few cases where the papilla are damaged to the point where they can no longer produce hair. Unfortunately, these few cases are the ones used as examples to prove that waxing can indeed decrease the amount of hair growth.

Articles on this page are excerpts from Electrolysis, Thermolysis, and the Blend by Arthur Ralph Hinkle