In a far-off country there was once a little-girl-no-longer called Brownielocks, because her hair shone darkly. Though her locks were lovely enough to earn a namesake, she had three hairs: a straight hair, a wavy hair, and a kinky-curly-crazy hair, which bothered her.
The straight hair poked from Brownielocks's china-doll chin. The wavy hair waved just above her perfectly smoothed eyebrows. And the kinky-curly-crazy-hair grew on her left calf amongst a group of more sedate fellows.
Brownielocks was ever plucking at them. She would leave the house, dressed to the nines, off to a lovely day or evening. But the straight hair, the wavy hair, and the kinky-curly-crazy-hair tended to spring forth at inconvenient intervals and make unwont introductions.
She was unable to keep her dirty mitts off them and tried often to pull them out with her fingernails. The follicles were often inflamed and finally she turned to tweezers.
She kept them carefully cleaned with soap and water and treated the tips with a wipe of alcohol before use. For precise pulls, she would sometimes clean the hairs with a facial astringent to cut their slippery oil.
She tried to make it routine: a morning check and pull, keeping tweezers in her bag. Re-checking, often with grubby mitts, for the stout stalk, the hard dark wire. Discovery meant the clean sting, the examination, and the brief relief. Even if, they always returned.
But the nuisance of it kept her looking for other options. Soon she tried shaving.
She used a clean sharp razor, and soaked the hairs first with warm water to soften them. She applied a dab of lubricant to each and slid the razor over each in turn.
The straight hair cut cleanly, but left a bumpy follicle behind with the blunt end of the hair clearly visible as a dark dot in the center.
The wavy hair cut well too, but left a strange shiny patch on her forehead where all the vellus hairs (too fine to see individually) were felled as collateral damage.
The kinky-curly-crazy-hair was cut last, the bulk of it disappeared in a swipe, but it had already buried its tip into her shapely calf. Root and tip were left behind. Two red bumps, each with a dark dot in the center, were left as markers.
Next she tried a mixture of thioglycates: both of calcium and phosphate. The product rhymed with hair and promised it would break down their disulfide bonds. So she could, after a few moments, wipe them away.
She tried it on the straight hair of her china-doll chin, and the product warning label shouted, “Not the face...” weakly to dissuade her. But "Hair is hair, on the face or anywhere." rang the memory of her mother's voice (who used laundry bleach on her thin mustache). It overrode her good sense.
While she waited on the straight hair, she treated the wavy hair above her brow. She dabbed on but a dot, and the site soon began to burn and sting. The warning label swooned and passed out as gravity took the product towards her eyeball. Thioglycates, being highly alkaline, can cause severe burns and like household bleach can lead to permanent blindness.
Finally she treated the kinky-curly-crazy-hair. While it dissolved like a sugar witch, she wiped away the first two sites. She learned as she wiped away hair and flesh, that these two things are of the same ken. Both are made from blocks of a protein called keratin. Both get a little cranky when their disulfide bonds are broken and both came away easily with a swipe.
Her shapely calf fared best, and the kinky-curly-crazy-hair squealed: "Who'd have thought a good little girl like you could destroy all my beautiful kinkiness!" as it sluffed away; the roots stayed behind and the results lasted no longer than a shave. Though the resulting hair tips were marginally softer as they were not so blunted as with shaving, the dark dots told her a tale of defeat.
Finally she went to Peach Willow Spa and met the author of this little tale. Since her medical history and skin analysis showed no contraindications for electrolysis, she was treated.
Using a filament as fine as her own hair, inserted carefully into the very pore from which those villains grew, her electrologist sent a tiny amount of electric current into the hair root.
Thermolysis is one method, first used in the 1920's by Henri Bordier, it heats the hair-cell-matrix to 118 degrees for a moment, killing the hair and sometimes the root. The hair is then pulled and regrowth is retreated until the hair root is killed and regrowth ceases.
Galvanic is another method, first used by an eye-doctor in 1875 to remove ingrown eyelashes, which Brownielocks shuddered to think about. After the filament is inserted, 0-3 milliamperes of direct current is sent into the follicle, causing a chemical reaction that creates micro-amounts of alkaline agents inside the pore at the root which self-neutralize.
But her electrologist used the blend method, which combines these two methods. Brownielocks endured the mild shock of it with grace.
After several treatments: the straight hair, the wavy hair, and the kinky curly crazy hair, were no more. Legend says they were reborn on a bear's bare derrière.
And that, my dear children, is why bears will eat you.