archives
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Waxing Philosophic, Part Three: Color Me Embarrassed
I am not someone who is easily embarrassed. I mean, please – I’ve been waxing on about my vagina for the last three days. That said, I have had some waxing experiences that have left me scrambling for my panties and my dignity.I grew up in the infamous valley of Martha Coolidge’s 1983 film classic, Valley Girl. Like totally, fur sure. In my early twenties, after swearing off college for a few years to pursue my babysitting career, I decided, much to the relief of my parents, to finish my formal education, or at least get a BA in something. I was accepted to UC Riverside, about seventy miles east-ish of my totally rad digs in the Valley. I moved myself to Riverside, with roommates and everything, and drove back to LA nearly every weekend. On these weekend sojourns I would make money babysitting and spend it swing dancing. I would also schedule appointments to see my regular bikini waxer, Christina. She, like totally, worked in the mall. It was like awesomely convenient, and Christina knew her stuff.
One day in Riverside, I got an invitation from a classmate, a cute, male classmate to go to the beach on a Saturday. “Um, yes. Ok. Great! Yeah, I’d love to. Thanks.” After accepting the invitation, I realized that I would not make it to LA to see Christina before the beach trip. The horrors! I decided the best option would be to find some one locally to help me keep my swimsuit from revealing too much on a first date. I mean, all I wanted was a regular ol’ bikini wax. How hard could that be? Heh.
When I arrived at the salon, a strip mall getup that was buzzing in a gossipy Steele Magnolia’s kind of way, I was informed that the woman I had spoken to on the phone would not be able to see me. Instead, a girl about my age led me back to the small waxing room. She looked at me as a reluctant prostitute might look at a fat, ugly john – a fat, ugly john with a vomitously pungent odor. Her disdain was palpable. I should have left then.
After I stripped out of my jeans and tried to make myself comfortable in what felt like a dentist’s chair, Waxing Girl, whose name and face I have thankfully forgotten, timidly looked at my crotch. Her touch was even more timid than her look as she gingerly spread wax on a very small square of my skin. It soon became painfully (quite literally painfully) apparent that this woman had little or no experience waxing anything at all, let alone another woman’s pubic hair. Once the small patch of skin was covered in wax, that was not quite hot enough to spread comfortably, she reached for a small piece of paper. “What’s that?” I questioned.
“Oh, it’s a curling paper.”
“Curling paper?
“You know, you put it around the curler when you’re doing a perm. We find it works well for taking off the wax.”
Really? How does one find that? “Oops, I was perming your hair and one of the papers happened to fall on your wax-covered crotch, and eureka!” I mean, forget Archimedes and his stinkin’ bathtub; these ladies were on to something! Or not. Using her index figure, Waxing Girl pressed the thin curling paper into the nearly dry wax on the skin just above my femoral artery. She gently rubbed the area for a moment and then pulled the edge of the paper leaving my skin covered in wax and strips of torn paper. “Really, you find this works better?”
Waxing girl and I were locked in that small room for what seemed like hours (Christina would have had me in and out in 20 minutes). I think she even ducked out to ask for advice at one point. I thought about standing up and saying, “Just forget it,” as I figured out a way not to get wax on my jeans, but then what would I do to prepare for my beach date? I don’t know why shaving didn’t occur to me – it couldn’t have been any more painful and annoying – but it didn’t.
The conversations that punctuated our silences were brief and infrequent. “Um, could you give me something to use to try and get the wax off of my sleeve?”
“Oh, whoops.”
During these silences we heard the pick-a-little-talk-a-little ooze under the door from the main part of the salon. We also heard the excited utterances of children at play; someone had brought her children, presumably to increase the noise level in the already bustling salon. Generous. Normally, I would have welcomed an interruption to my misery, but the one that ultimately came was far from desirable. Suddenly, and without warning, the children became louder as the door to the waxing room swung open violently.
As if in a tableau, we all froze – me spread eagle on my back, Waxing Girl with her face in my crotch and her hand on my hip, and the thirteen year-old boy framed by the small doorway. I held my breath and looked at Waxing Girl. We were the dear and he was the headlights. “Riley! Close that door, and get your butt over here!” Slam! I never thought I would be happy to be alone with Waxing Girl. Now I wished to stay with her, with the door closed, at least until the permanently scarred boy and his negligent mother left.
I got my wish. When we finally emerged from the torture chamber, me with slightly less hair than I had when we began, the children were gone. I felt red from head to toe as I imagined that everyone in the salon had caught a glimpse of me sans pants. Waxing Girl delivered me to the salon owner to pay and started to walk back towards her lair. I began to pull out whatever amount of money it was that I had agreed to over the phone when the owner hollered to Waxing Girl, “What kind of wax did you do?”
Waxing Girl had that fawn-like stare again, so I butt in, “Just a regular bikini wax.” The owner must have heard me, but she pretended I didn’t exist and yelled to Waxing Girl, over the heads of the other customers, “How much hair was it.” She then turned to me for the first time, and explained that they had different prices depending on the quality and thickness of one’s pubic hair. Go ahead. Put that in your add. Waxing Girl’s eyes got even bigger as she tried to describe the quantity and quality of my hair. Didn’t everyone freakin’ see my hair when that Ritalin-lacking kid barged in on me? Ultimately we agreed on a price. I consider it hush money; I paid her to hush up her obstreperous analysis of my vaginal hair growth patterns.
I left feeling ashamed. How dare I ask someone to perform a service that they advertise? How dare I have more than two pubic hairs? How dare I get upset when my clothing gets wax on it? What kind of freak am I? I think I went home and tried to repair the damage as best I could with tweezers and olive oil. Sadly, I wore shorts to the beach. I, like totally, should have driven back to the Valley. Christina would have beat that little boy’s ass. Waxing Girl’s, too. No charge.
I'm Not a Poet
Noon on Wednesdays: An Ode to Nneka’s Class
Smiling and shimmying stinking and wet
Shiny floor reflects our agile silhouettes
We glide by on tennis-shoed feet
Smooth glass surrounds the slippery beat
Music thumps through the air
Soaks up our sorrows
Erases our cares
Professional dancers strut and stride
And diva housewives display their pride
We move in unison
But each on her own
Though we all fantasize we’re Nneka’s rhythmic clone
Latin beats caress us
Samba fills our hearts
We are a unit of disparate parts
One-two-triple-step
Three-four-cha-cha-cha
Our souls are bared and in the raw
Merengue embraces us
Salsa takes flight
We’re living our dance
Marinating in delight
Monday, March 17, 2008
Waxing Philosophic, Part Two: A Hair Ahead of Her Time
I was about twenty-one before I let anyone, self included, get wax anywhere near my panty line. Back then, Brazilians were not something that were part of the cultural psyche, let alone my psyche. In fact, I had been told by one waxer, whom I had no reason to disbelieve, that getting wax on the actual lips of the vagina was dangerous and could cause skin removal.At this point in my life, I had no regular waxer. I was shopping around for a keeper, my main criterion being low price. This was also before the Internet was really hopping with mom and pop businesses. I remember using the yellow pages and calling around to find the cheapest quote.
Ultimately, I found a woman who agreed to wax me cheaply and soon. I am always nervous when I meet a new waxer, and this time was no exception. As Rosa of Magic Hair Cut led me back to her small “room” separated from the rest of the salon with a faded curtain, my feet stuck to the dirty white linoleum, and my palms gathered sweat.
I noticed that instead of sheets of white muslin, to which I was accustomed, she had colorful sheets of cloth set-up next to the vat of wax. Ever the cost cutter, Rosa had torn up old bed sheets in lieu of paying for waxing strips. I suppose I ought to have thanked her for her frugality – clearly she was passing her savings on to her customers – but instead I pondered whether the sheets had been washed first.
Before I started getting Brazilians, I always made sure to wear the perfect undies to the salon. They had to be cute enough that I wouldn’t be embarrassed when the esthetician saw them, and not so cute that I would be forever grumpy if they got some wax on them. After stripping down to my plain black skivvies in the privacy of the curtained room, Rosa reentered ready to go.
She got right to work, and despite my concern about the cleanliness of the bed sheet strips, they seemed to work pretty well. Rosa was cheap and fast – my kind of woman. Before I knew it, she had finished removing the hair from what I called, at the time, my sideburns – the strips of hair on either side of my panty line that didn’t exactly make it into my swimsuit. She then began to pull my conservative underwear to one side. “What are you doing?” I managed to mumble.
“Oh honey, we get a little bit more. It look better. Trust me.”
“Is that safe? I don’t know if I want that.”
“Honey, ‘course it’s safe. You need it. Trust me.”
What can you say to that? Now, Rosa certainly didn’t do a full Brazilian by today’s standards, but she definitely pushed my boundaries, and my panty line to the limit. She never stopped telling me how much I would like it, and how much I should also get my brows done, too. “You need it, honey. It is too much… Too much hair.”
Growing up in a house with a fair-haired mom who didn’t even shave her light leg hair for most of my life, the thought of removing hair from my brows had not occurred to me. Rosa found my soft spot, though, and kept pushing. “You will look so much better… We just do a little bit… I can’t believe you no do before… You need so much.”
I left Magic Hair Cut with bare lips and thin brows. I thought I looked ridiculous, and was shocked when no one seemed to notice my new brow line. I mocked Rosa openly and explained how I was lucky to have any skin on my vagina after what she had done. It would be five years before I had my first intentional Brazilian wax, and ten before I paid anyone to wax my brows again. I never went back to Rosa.
As I sit here now, with my well-groomed brows and hairless vagina, I think back on Rosa with fondness. She Knew what I needed before I knew what I needed. She was fast and cheap and honest… I really did need it so much. Thanks, Rosa.
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…
Friday, March 7, 2008
Faux Pole
About a year and a half ago, I took my first dance class with Annamarie at my local 24 Hour Fitness. The name of the class is what drew me in: 24 Tease. It is described on the 24 Hour Fitness website as, “an electrifying 30-minute striptease aerobics workout… [that] provides a safe environment for members to get in touch with their inner stripper, while taking off pounds, extra clothing and even some inhibitions to reveal a healthier body and stronger self-esteem.”The “safe environment” at my gym is a sweaty fishbowl of a room that provides a clear line of sight for anyone hanging about on an elliptical or climbing the never-ending stairs to skinniness and personal acceptance. The large windows also provide quite a draw for those who lift weights briefly in between their rest periods rather than the reverse.
If I am lucky, I start my Monday nights at 5:30 with Annamarie’s 24 Set class. She tosses us back and forth from weights to aerobics for a good hour. We heave our sweaty bodies over aerobic steps of various heights, and do bicep curls and lunges in rhythm with a poppy remix of Rose Royce’s “Car Wash.” The 1982 version of “Maneater” has also been known to drift through the damp, gym-scented air. This is followed by a half an hour of salsa. We shake and shimmy and listen to Shakira cooing to us that hips tell the truth.
The real show starts at 7:00. Most of the women from the first hour of circuit training are gone now and, while salsa is popular, the room doesn’t really get crowded until Annamarie dons her pink feather boa and begins 24 Tease. She reminds us that she is not ashamed of her body, that she loves to touch it, and “put on her lotion” (by this she means rubbing her hands over her, now sweaty, spandex getup). She declares us all Divas, and the hooting begins. I admit that I am an instigator of the hooting.
I can’t help but grin as I stare into the mirror and see reflected there women of all shapes, sizes and varieties. I am a judgmental bitch, but it warms my cold, cold heart to see all of these women convening to explore their sexuality. Yes, the room is lacking ambiance. Yes, some of us are wearing sweaty t-shirts and runny mascara. But something magical is afoot. Women who had been stone silent during the earlier classes begin to giggle. Women whom I had pegged as grandmas, begin to wiggle their hips outrageously. Catcalls are uttered; smiles are flashed. Women from all walks of life are drawn here. For some reason, they feel compelled to experience this class. It is a good workout; I have been known to burn over three hundred calories in the scant half hour class. But I don’t think that is why they come. I don’t think that is why I come.
These women are here to take ownership of themselves. They are here to declare their femininity, their beauty, their power. They are here to fantasize that the weighted bar that they are sashaying about and sliding down is a stripper pole. They are here to “hit the floor” if Flo Rida tells them to.
I am here because I can’t resist the temporary community made up of women who lead such disparate lives. I am here because I relish being a part of something that doesn’t require words. I am here because I love to shake my booty. That’s what we are really – a consortium of booty shakers. In this dank, crowded room in Hayward, California, lawyers, and secretaries, teachers, and housewives, grandmas and students come together as women. Yes, I realize it is just an aerobics class that has incorporated a few extra hip circles, but I love it just the same. While jaunting about my faux pole, I can’t help but imagine that we are all witches gyrating under a canopy of moonlit trees rather than fitness junkies under bad fluorescent lighting. I like to fantasize that we are like the witches, ushering in a new era where women are comfortable with their bodies and take pride in their glorious sexuality.
Labels: dance
archives
