Nobody likes tweezing. It hurts, it’s time consuming, but for many of us it is a necessary evil. You see, I have been “blessed” with a natural uni-brow. I still remember the first time I tried plucking my eyebrows. My eyes teared up, I kept grabbing skin instead of hair, it was decidedly not a good time. And it hurt! I asked my mother if it would always hurt this bad, and her reply was that it got less painful the more you did it. I still don’t know if that is necessarily true. It’s more like you know it is going to suck, so you just steal yourself to it and try to get through it as quickly as possible. Waxing is much faster, but we can’t always rely on a waxing when we need it. So, if you too, have the need to tweeze, here are some tips on how to make it less painful.

Take A Pre-Tweezing Hot Shower

The idea here is to open up those pores. With the pores open, they won’t be gripping those stubborn hairs quite so tightly. If you don’t have time for a full on hot shower, you can always opt to just apply a hot compress to the area for a few minutes. Once the deed is done, switch things up by applying a cold cloth to the skin. This will help reduce the redness and inflammation so you won’t look all pink and splotchy if you’ve got to dash out the door.

That Time Of The Month? Delay The Tweezing!

Around the time Aunt Flo comes to visit, our skin is actually at its most sensitive. That means tugging a bunch of hair out is gonna hurt more, too. So, try to work your tweezing times around when you’ll be surfing the crimson wave.

Do It The Right Way

Sometimes we don’t have time to tweeze with absolute care. We’ve got places to be, people we have to see, but we also have caterpillars on our face to tame. So, we just go into full weed-whacker mode and start ripping hairs out fast. But, what we should really be doing is plucking carefully to reduce pain. Ideally, you should be getting as close to the base of the hair as possible. Next, you want to pull it out in the direction that the hair is growing. Going in the opposite direction causes more irritation, and yes, more pain. Also, make sure your tweezers are sharp so they can work most effectively.

Get Some Cortisone Cream

If you’re still walking away from a tweezing sesh in a lot of pain, consider a cortisone cream. Cortisone is a topical anti-inflammatory that you can get over the counter. It will help with the pain and swelling and it’s good for other things too, like bug bites. Just make sure you apply it after you pluck, and not before. Doing so before will make your eyebrows oily and slick, thus increasing the chance your tweezers will slip mid-pull.