My run with eyebrow waxing ended the day I got sneezed on.

Yes, sneezed on. I was laying comfortably on the aesthetician’s table—well, as comfortably as you can when someone’s using hot wax to rip hair off your face—when, just as she was pulling a wax strip off my skin, she sneezed. Needless to say, the outburst messed up her form a bit. I left the spa with seriously uneven brows and spent the next couple weeks looking like I was in a constant state of surprise.

The incident inspired me to look into eyebrow threading, an Eastern technique in which aestheticians use thread to entwine hair and pull it out at the root. I’ve been a convert for three years, mostly thanks to the following three reasons:

1. All you need is thread.

There’s so much less fuss that goes into a threading session. No warmers melting open pots of wax. No cutting of cloth strips. No arsenal of products to prep and soothe the skin. No tweezers to remove the hairs the wax missed.

During my sessions with Cristy at marimarshe’ salon (2251 S. Michigan Ave.), all she uses is Organica, an organic thread specially designed for hair removal. It allows for much more precision than waxing, so she’s able to get every hair with this single tool. If necessary, she’ll brush up my brows afterward and trim excess length with brow scissors. But that’s it. The whole session takes 10 minutes or less, and it’s amazing how cleanly my brows are shaped.

2. Compared to waxing, it’s much less painful.

I mean, it’s not the best feeling in the world. You do feel the hairs being pulled out. But the sensation passes quickly—there’s no residual pain like with waxing. I will say that it’s a bit more uncomfortable when she’s working below the brows, because that skin is more sensitive.

Unlike waxing, though, threading glides over the skin, only pulling at hairs and not pinching or irritating the skin—assuming it’s pulled taut like it would be if you were tweezing. Cristy unwinds a few feet of thread and grabs it in the middle. She creates a loop at the midpoint by winding the ends together several times. She then places one loose end in her mouth; one hand holds the other loose end while the other hand holds the loop. These three anchors allow Cristy to alternate pressure that tightly twists the thread together near the loop—and that twisting motion snags errants hairs and pulls them out.

3. Speaking of which, it’s way easier on the skin.

Cristy says that clients with rosacea or sensitive skin have come to her at their dermatologists’ recommendation, since threading is much gentler than waxing. “No matter how [natural] the wax is, it’s still gonna damage your skin eventually if you do it for long periods of time,” she says.

She finds that the tugging involved with waxing can stretch skin out over time, leading to wrinkles or loss of elasticity. Waxing often removes the topmost layer of skin, too, which can weaken cells. (I know I would sometimes notice little blood spots on my skin after a brow wax because of how much was pulled off.)

Plus, many wax formulas have chemicals and other additives that can irritate skin. Cristy always offers to apply a soothing lotion to my brows when she’s done, but I always pass because I feel like I don’t need it. And calm skin after any kind of hair removal is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Photo by Mahreen Younus, Groupon