Many women have a love-hate relationship with shaving. When you need to make your legs look smooth and beautiful in a pinch, razors can be your best friend. But the results are short-lived. So if your goal is to stay stubble-free, shaving can seem like a never-ending ritual that leaves you perpetually unsatisfied. Plus, there's always the risk that you'll nick yourself with a razor blade and end up sporting a bandage all day.
If this frustrating hair removal cycle sounds all too familiar, rest assured that you are not alone. According to one women's magazine, 73 percent of females try to get rid of leg hair around three times every week [source: Goins]. That adds up to a lot of hours spent shaving. But there are other methods of hair removal that don't require a razor every few days to get your legs looking smooth. One such method is waxing, an approach that's similar to tweezing in that it pulls hair out from the root.
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Women have practiced waxing in some form for centuries. Ancient Egyptian women were the first to use wax to remove hair [sources: Capel]. But women in the Middle East have also used a similar process called "sugaring" for centuries, and they still use it today. Sugaring involves taking sugar, lemon and warm water and combining it into a mixture. You spread a thin layer on your skin; once the mixture hardens, pull it off, and the hair comes with it [source: Szuchman]
Similarly, waxing is accomplished by putting either warm or cold wax on the skin and then pulling the wax off with the individual hairs stuck to it [source: Barba]. Read on to find out what you need to know if you want to want to replace shaving with waxing as your preferred method of leg hair removal -- including how to prep your legs for waxing, why you shouldn't wax your legs close to menstruation time and how your body is similar to a gorilla's body.
