Many cultures view body hair as offensive and a hindrance to a beautiful appearance, especially for women. Most women are thus constantly looking for the perfect method of hair removal, - one that offers the most long-lasting results and is not very painful. There are many methods of hair removal that can be carried out at home, each of which varies in terms of efficiency, how long the effects last, as well as the pain involved in the process. Unfortunately there are no hair removal methods that offer permanent results and can be conducted at home. Permanent hair removal techniques include laser treatment and electrolysis for which you need to visit a professional. Laser treatment, though increasingly popular is not necessarily permanent and has a risk of injuries and scarring. Electrolysis, on the other hand, is permanent since it damages the cells that produce hair and thus render the follicles incapable of producing hair. However these methods are very expensive. You can instead resort to the various hair removal techniques which can be carried out at home and can leave your arms and legs smooth for up to 3 weeks to a month.
The most common method of hair removal is waxing. In this method wax is heated and applied to the skin, taking care that the wax is not too hot and does not burn the skin. A piece of cloth is immediately pressed to the skin and stripped away, pulling the hair along with it. This pulls the hair out from the roots and also gets rid of the dead skin accumulated on the surface, thus it leaves the skin smooth for several weeks. This does cause a slight pain when the cloth is stripped away from the skin, especially if your hair growth is dense, but regular waxing helps to reduce the hair growth gradually till you do not have to wax for months at ends. Epilating is another method of hair removal that leaves your skin smooth for several weeks. In this method, a small machine with a line of tweezers is used to pluck out the hair from the roots. As the machine moves over the skin, the hair is pulled out. Though slightly more painful than waxing, this is convenient since it does not involve the mess of heating wax, cloth strips and other items and the results last for several weeks. More painless methods include hair removing creams and shaving. Hair removing creams use chemicals that burn the roots of the hair and leave the skin smooth for anything from a few days to a couple of weeks. However the chemicals might not react favorably with your skin and lead to redness, burning or worse reactions, so you should always do a patch test first. Shaving is the most convenient and quick method of hair removal, but it is also the one which lasts the least amount of time. Since it only cuts the hair from the surface of the skin, the hair grows back within a few days and it often leads to the problem of the shadow visible due to the hair roots visible under the surface of the skin and in-growing hair.
answered by M W