Electric tweezers use electrical current to kill hair follicles and remove hair.
Electric tweezers are a tool used in hair removal. They work like normal tweezers, except they are connected to an electrical current. The current supposedly kills the hair follicle and removes it permanently, but unlike electrolysis, there is no direct contact between the follicle and the electricity. Although widely sold for home and professional use, electric tweezers are not considered an effective method of permanent hair removal.
Electric tweezers were invented in 1959 and marketed as a permanent and painless method of hair removal. In the 1970s, they were widely sold to professional estheticians for use in salons. In 1985, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sanctioned companies selling electric tweezers because their claim that tweezers remove hair permanently was unsubstantiated. After the sanctions, manufacturers were forced to include information on their labels stating that the product could only temporarily remove hair.
FTC-approved pliers ran on alternating current, so a wave of products using direct current hit the market in the early 1990s. Most of these tools were sold directly to consumers through infomercials and advertisements. of TV. Amid claims from the scientific community that electricity cannot travel through a hair to the follicle, many of these companies have sold a conductive gel along with their electric tweezers products. Some companies sold electric tweezers as “transdermal electrolysis” to avoid association with the negative media attention the product received.
In tweezing hair, the hair is caught in the tweezers and pulled out by the roots. As a temporary hair removal method, electric tweezers are often effective because the hair is still completely removed. They have the advantage of being less painful than normal tweezers. While tweezing is only temporary, uprooted hair takes longer to grow back than trimmed hair.
The use of electric tweezers can take much longer than normal tweezers because the hair must be held for up to three minutes to allow the supposed action of the electric current that runs through the hair to the root. This hair removal method is also considerably more expensive than normal tweezing.