Monday, March 17, 2008
Waxing Philosophic, Part One: Close Encounters of the Waxing Kind
I have been paying people to wax my vajayjay since long before it was called a vajayjay. Over the course of my ten-plus years of paying women to spread hot waxy goo all over my nether regions and then rip it off, along with my stubborn dark hairs, I have had some pretty interesting, and disturbing, experiences. I found myself ruminating on these adventures recently when I received a seemingly innocuous email that was circulated around my office. I work with a bunch of women, so it was a no-brainer for one of my colleagues to send a notice out to everyone that her local salon was offering low-cost Brazilians in order to train some of their newer techs.
While the thought of hot wax applied to one’s vagina by anyone, let alone a novice, might be enough to make most women glisten with a cold sweat, my interest was peaked; I am a cheap skate, after all. Why pay full price when discounts are an option? After reading further, I learned that this was not an option I could take. The salon, a posh, trendy operation with locations in Union Square and Mill Valley, was one I had been to before, and one that was responsible for causing me some severe waxing trauma.
This was the very salon, the very upscale, expensive salon, that, last September, provided me with an esthetician who didn’t wear gloves and who dipped her wax-spreading stick into the community pool of warm wax multiple times before and after smoothing it over my delicate flower. No, this was not my own, personal, hundred-calorie pack of wax as some salons now provide. It was a big ol’ vat good for a myriad of wax jobs and a myriad of cooties and other infectious diseases. Gross with a capital “Gro.”
Looking back on this incident, I realize that I should have confronted the woman spreading communal wax on my most private of parts right then and there. I did ask her about the practice, and when she replied that the wax was hot enough to kill all manner of microscopic beasties, I wish I’d at least pulled one of those “bullshit” mumbling coughs into the crook of my arm.
After the pillaging of my crotch, on the BART ride home, I composed mental tirades and imaginary letters to the Better Business Bureau. But while I lay on my back, my sweat soaking through the thin table paper, feeling my flesh begin to stick to the vinyl underneath, I was silent. I lay there in that closet of a room in the upscale salon and listened to the waxing woman wax on in her staccato Russian accent about how having children was a burden I should avoid, and how politics would be the death of us all. I didn’t say a word as she dipped and spread and dipped and spread. I lay still and tried to hide the grimace that I felt welling-up from the core of my germ-a-phobic being. And then I paid her. I think I even gave her a tip. Later, I comforted myself by promising that I would never go back and expose my womanhood to such cruelty. I am not that kind of masochist.
A few days ago, when I saw the email singing the praises of this very salon, I thought about keeping quiet again. I decided instead to speak-up and protect my coworkers from suffering a similar fate. Wow! Maybe I do learn things.
I formulated a “reply all” email explaining my plight while trying not to be a biatch to the woman who had so kindly put forth the offer in the first place. Now, I send out a ton of emails at work. Most of them are about work. In fact, with the exception of the wax warning, nearly all of them are work related. Usually, it is like pulling teeth to get my colleagues to respond to my diatribes. Amazing shit happens when you mention your vagina.
Within minutes, my inbox was full of new mail on the subject. I ended up with everything from effusive thanks for protecting the vajayjays of the world from peril to recommendations for a good laser hair removal medspa. Even the sender of the initial email, the woman whose feelings I had been concerned I might hurt if I sent out a word of warning, thanked me for speaking up. She went on to tell me that her friend was actually a co-owner of the salon in question and that she was working to retrain the older employees who insisted on double-dipping and barehanded waxing.
Wow! Not only did my words have an impact on my co-workers, but the unhygienic, cootie-spreading practice may stop at the actual salon. Son of a gun! As I turned the pages of my memory through wax jobs I wish I didn’t remember, I realized that I am chalk-full of cautionary tales of waxings gone wrong – or at least gone interesting. In the spirit of protecting the vageens of the world, and also because they make me laugh, I thought I would share them here as well. So, here I go, waxing on…Labels: rant, wax
tidbit posted by Mosa @ 2:49 PM
