Wax it, Pluck it, Sugar it, Stroke it, Love it or Hate it – it’s Here to Stay

Beauty is pain.
Ever heard this saying? No? Then you are clearly a male reader. Women are born and named: Talula-Anne Jonson-Beauty-is-pain. It is quite simply the way being a woman in today’s society goes. Do not avert your eyes, this is not a feminist rant, this is the way life works, since, like, way back when. No one does hairy. This I mean in every sense of the word.
Often people think I exaggerate things, now, from where they would have gotten such an idea is quite beyond me. Well, The Beauty and The Pain are utterly true, if it’s not high heels that I’m trying to pull off it’ll be deep rooted hair. I am tall enough, I know, but apparently Lilly Allen is the only one who can do dress and trainers…even Gift of the Gab won’t save you if the club has a strict No-Trainer Policy. One of my friends was trying to convince me about the wonders of heels once, as we tried to cram my splayed toes into a pair of very nice, very high shoes, “Heels are great for your calves!” Still today I try to imagine myself on the treadmill in stilettos… But frankly there is nothing to be said about attractive facial hair, as a Portuguese beautician once shamelessly pointed out to me that I really ought to do something about my (I thought, more or less non-existent) moustache… I had gone to have my eyebrows waxed since I thought it would last longer, you see, I find myself whipping my eyebrows back into shape every other day - or rather I don’t, and then look like I’m trying to ‘bring hairy back’. After having pulled what felt like nearly all my facial skin off, the beautician declared she was done. I sat up, peered through tear blurred eyes at myself in the mirror and realized I looked like I had been slapped about by a kipper with a deep-seated hate for eyebrows and moustaches. Not to mention looking like Marilyn Manson’s long lost step-sister with mascara running in every direction around my entire face.

“And straight ahead you have the remainder of the Beauty To-Do List…”

Women do not want to be seen as two-legged Yetis with an all year round coarse fur coat, a hairy caterpillar framing their top lip, mono-brow and a fine haired medusa moving with the rhythm of the wind when the armpit is exposed. Rumour has it French women think differently, but it will remain a rumour, on this blog anyway. Now is when I ignore my French part of the family and embrace the meticulously clean Spanish side, don’t get me wrong, hairy is no synonym for dirty, it just means more conditioner.
Really the world of beautiful pain is quite an extensive one: there is the hair on one’s head to be dealt with. Long, short, straight, curly, non-voluntarily afro, too thin, too thick, too wiry, too greasy – but we’re not going there as my gag reflex is very much active. The problems begin with curly hair – because neither long or short are your problems solved, if it is long it just means more decades are spent straightening it, and if it is short it just means you will no doubt, 105% guaranteed wake up with mushroom-shaped hair sitting atop your now, not so cute ears. Pictured it? You just summed up half of my childhood photos. And if straighteners are your poison of choice then burns will be your new buddy too. I have been scarred in the name of beauty on the backs of my ears, tops of them and my forehead – with a little dedication I could have a home-made Harry Potter GHD style burn across the front of my head. How else do you think actor’s doubles are made?! Not to mention trying to style your very own ‘just woken up-sexy-tousled-hair-look’ - I have always woken up looking like I got the fright of my life somewhere between bed time and dawn, so the look must be worked on. I did try it once. Just the once, mind. I blow dried, slightly straightened, but not really, my mass of curls and grabbed the fan from the summer of 1834. I sat in front of it for about 15 minutes before I decided I could no longer handle the squeaking of the ancient machine and through streaming eyes, nose and tonsil ejecting sneezes, the realization that I was allergic to dust and this was doing nothing for the allergies…well, I gave up. The ‘just woken up’ look is far too hard to be worthwhile. (Note, I wrote that with my toes crossed, I can’t possibly mean it, I am a girl after all.)
Back to eyebrows. Well now, thick eyebrows may be cute when you’re still in your mother’s womb, but instead of giving the new born a good smack (or is that just the barbarians in Spain?), the nurses ought to give priority to plucking eyebrows and then gunge, out of orifices… Bushy eyebrows on a girl just quite simply do not work. Models seen sporting a moustache above each eye ought to be paid a bundle and then perhaps shot. (Am not supporting the death penalty, perhaps rubber bullets could be used?) Thus for eyebrows, we find the possibilities encompassing waxing, threading, plucking and sugaring. The latter was clearly invented for women, by women and particularly during a PMS moment when multi-tasking involving snacking was needed. Then there’s the lady ‘tache – nothing ladylike about having a small lap-dog sitting on your top lip, but it happens. For that, the only suggestion is a lawn-mower.
Dare we move down? Well, the bikini wax is something that goes from extreme to extreme and apparently, is totally geography based. You see, there is the ‘Brazilian’ which is just the strip – unfortunately named the ‘landing strip’, I care not think what lands there, but apparently, for some, it does. Then you go to one I recently learnt about, it is called the ‘English’ and apparently is little off anywhere…makes one think that perhaps the English and the French share more than they would like to. And Hollywood – which is utterly confusing if you are trying to guess these according to intellectual reasoning: Hollywood = luxurious excess and therefore in bikini wax language a lustrous mound of folliculous maximus. Wrong. It is back to the bare essentials for the Hollywood-esques. Keeping it simple. Thus, I hear you say, a ‘Chinese’ would be the full au Naturel? No. That amount of hair is just careless.
Leg hair? Often does not exist until the knee and then you are greeted with the natural version of The International Kilt. Shave it, wax it, pluck it, stroke it, but either way it always tends to be half there, half not, and half on its way back.
The thing is, we complain about all these beauty treatments, and by ‘we’ I mean me, but part of it is the pure fun of complaining and the other, the fact that we wouldn’t have it any other way. And actually, you grow accustomed to it after a while. The wax strips I mean. Not the hair. Never ever grow accustomed to the hair. Leave that to when the mid-life crisis sets in, along with the sweat pants, the belief that we are quite happy on our own and that cats are not selfish and are the only thing we need in life. (Along with the sports car out front.)
Brace yourselves ladies – might I risk it and say gentlemen too? There are more of your metro-sexual trimming and shaping (nose and ear) kind these days…so brace yourselves, there will be those that tell you hair removal of any kind is bad, hair is there to protect from infection and stem sweat. I tell you, what are you doing sweating?? Did you not know that men perspire and women glisten? And, if infection were the problem, why were disinfectants made if not to facilitate body hygiene? You see, it all works in my world. Except for waxing eyebrows by the way, it wasn’t worth walking around with two red arches above each eye for 3 hours…no, Sir.