If you're a woman, unwanted facial hair may be a major source of stress in your personal and professional life. Fortunately, you don't need to live with embarrassing upper-lip hair. Hair-removal treatments help eliminate your mustache for days or weeks, and some options even give permanent results. Treatment choices range from basic and inexpensive at-home hair removal to more complicated procedures performed by a doctor.

Treat unwanted facial hair at home with a hot or cold waxing kit. With this method, you'll apply cold or hot wax to your upper lip, cover the waxed area with a fabric strip, and then pull the strip away quickly to remove hair. This is one the cheapest treatments, but it's often painful and messy. Some kits have strips with the wax already built into them. These aren't as messy as traditional waxing treatments.

Shave mustache hair off with a single-blade razor and a generous application of shaving cream. Shaving won't cause hair to grow back thicker or darker. If you prefer, you can get a similar procedure, called dermaplaning, done at many salons.

Use an over-the-counter depilatory cream to dissolve upper-lip hair. These products are inexpensive and usually keep hair at bay for a few weeks. However, the chemicals in some creams may irritate your skin.

Apply a prescription-strength hair-removal cream containing eflornithine hydrochloride. This product greatly slows down hair growth. Ask your dermatologist if this treatment will work for you. Since this is considered a vanity product, many insurance plans won't cover it so it can be expensive.

Get a threading treatment at a salon. With this treatment, a stylist twists thin threads around each hair and then pulls the hairs out gently. It isn't very painful, and hair stays away for two to six weeks.

Opt for a laser or intense pulsed light (IPL) treatment to remove severe unwanted facial hair. Both of these options cause hair growth to slow down considerably or stop completely. Laser treatment is painful, and it's best for women who have dark facial hair. IPL is less painful, and women with any hair color can use it. Each procedure will require multiple treatments to work.

Get an electrolysis treatment if you're interested in removing facial hair permanently. For this treatment, a doctor will apply a shock to each hair follicle. The shock kills the follicle so hair never grows back. However, electrolysis is expensive and painful. You'll also need multiple sessions. It can take up to 10 hours to remove all the hair from your upper lip.