The Waxing

by Erin Quinn

One of the upsides of winter, even a mild winter, is the lack of waxing that needs to take place on the more sensitive parts of the female anatomy.

In fact, even last summer, I avoided the waxing routine—which is not only time consuming, painful, costly, but arguably vain or lacking in Darwinian feminism—by purchasing one of those skirt bathing suits that graciously covered the questionably unattractive hairy areas.

My friend Kristen, who had always been a big fan of the skirt bathing suit, was thrilled years back when they went from matronly and almost impossible to find—except in plus-size shops like Lane Bryant—to being part of a new fashion trend. She marched right into a mall in Seattle and purchased a $90 skirted suit, more than she wanted to pay, but feeling that the price was well worth the return of the retro-model that she had been aching for all these years.

Now that the skirt-suits had been brought back to the likes of Lands End and the Gap and looked mildly chic or not altogether matronly and made of house-dress patterns, I jumped on the bandwagon as well, arguing to myself that the $100 suit purchased at Sears, was cheaper than the once-monthly waxing I’d have to pay for to sport a Speedo-style or bikini bathing attire.

Here’s the hitch: since my family and I live at the local public swimming pool all summer long, my skirt-suit, even though fairly well made, had died innumerable deaths by late August. It was see-through, pilled, and had no elasticity to it. But I hung onto it, or it hung on to me, and I consoled myself that there were only a few more pool days left until school started and I’d buy myself a new one the following year. I never thought there’d be a need for a swimsuit during the other three seasons since we weren’t a family that had the means to travel to more tropical locations during the non-summer months.

Come February, my mother gave me and my husband a birthday get-away at the exclusive Mohonk Mountain House resort. For years, the resort remained stubbornly old-fashioned, anchored in its naturalist Quaker roots, and offering swimming and spa-like alternatives only during the summer months when its pristine lake and beach-side dock could be opened and heated by the sun. But, in order to keep up with the times and provide their wealthy clientele with more typical four-star treatments, they recently built a $13 million health center and spa, complete with an indoor swimming pool and mineral bath.

Great. Who wouldn’t want to take a dip in a heated pool in February or relax in the steaming mineral bath? I sure would, except, it dawned on me, I didn’t have a bathing suit. I couldn’t possibly drag that rag of a withered skirt-suit up to Mohonk! Especially for a romantic birthday getaway with my husband.

I dug through my closet for an alternative and discovered an ocean-blue suit that was in fine condition, fairly sporty, but with one problem—it cut right up over the bikini area, leaving all that had been tucked away in corduroys all winter visible to the bathing eye.

No need to panic, I would just get waxed. I’d saved up a gift certificate I received for Christmas that I could cash in on at a local beauty salon I made the appointment for the day before our trip, imagining that I would be seal-like in my hairlessness and feeling as smooth and sexy as porcelain.

Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

I arrived on time, dressed in pleated trousers and a thin, wool turtleneck sweater as I had to go immediately from my waxing appointment to cover a local board meeting for the newspaper I work for. Knowing some strange woman would be working on my bikini area and thighs, I even put on thong-like underwear, which I normally avoid because it feels like a permanent wedgie at best or at worst like a stray thread sliding up and down my butt all day. But I wanted to give her room to maneuver.

When I checked in with the receptionist, who was bleach-blonde and had an unnatural orange-glow to her skin, which I imagined was from the tanning booths the salon boasted, she asked me if I wanted a traditional bikini wax or a “Brazilian” bikini wax.

That stumped me, so I said “traditional” because I had no idea what in the hell a Brazilian bikini wax was but didn’t want to look too dated or beauty-challenged.

A young woman with a short denim mini-skirt and an animal print blouse with very long fingernails decorated to match, led me to our little waxing cubicle. She was very perky and wore her highlighted hair clipped on top of her head, reminding me a bit of Pebbles from the Flinstones.

She introduced herself, instructed me to put on a pair of disposable underwear that had been left on the counter, to cover myself with a towel and she’d be right back.

It had been a year since I’d been waxed and the disposable underwear was new. Of course, being a reporter, I couldn’t help but ask her, “Why the disposable underwear? Is it a new health department regulation?”

She looked at me curiously, “No, it’s so wax doesn’t ruin your good underwear.”

Oh, right, I thought as she shut the door. The disposable underwear consisted of two, one-inch panels of white synthetic material held together by an elastic string. They revealed even more of myself than the thong I had thought I’d been clever to wear.

I laid on the table, in my disposable underwear, with the small, wash-cloth like towel draped over me and my bare legs and feet sticking out. I sucked in my breath, the way I do in those moments when waiting for the dentist to arrive and begin his innumerable assaults on oral nerves. Only with waxing there is no laughing gas or Novocain. It’s a real suck-it-up experience and one that a gal has to endure to achieve hairless status.

She knocked on the door. “Ready?”

 “Ready,” I responded, clenching my teeth and trying to transport myself somewhere else.

Her high heels made an unnerving clipping sound as she marched from one counter to another, applying rubber gloves and testing the wax to see if it was sufficiently heated.

 “We’re doing a bikini and upper leg right?” she asked.

 “Yes,” I said and thought I’d take this opportunity to ask the question that had been lingering in my mind.

As she applied the steaming wax to the crevices of my groin, I said, “What is a Brazilian treatment?”

 “Everything,” she said.

I pictured an MRI-like tube where the victims were placed inside and covered from head to toe in wax except, for a shower cap that kept their head hair from being pulled off. The machine would spin and whirl and rip off the wax and the person would emerge pink and somewhat blood-streaked but without one follicle on their body.

Rip. I squeezed my eyes shut.

 “Sorry,” she said, “I hate hurting people.”

 “The price of beauty,” I offered dumbly. “What did you mean by everything?”

Rip. “You know, EVERYTHING! The vagina, in between the buttocks…we have a specialist who comes in once a week to do them. It’s such a sensitive area.”

Yeah, I thought. Wow.

Rip. “Is this a popular thing?  A new trend?”  I asked, my curiosity now piqued, and my bikini area red and aflame.

 “There are very few salons that do it. It requires an expert,” she said, clipping back and fourth, discarding strips of waxed-hair in the trash bin and caking on more wax with what looked to be a tongue-depresser.

 “At my cosmetology school no one was brave enough to get it done so we just watched videos of it…but it comes from Brazil.”

That much, I had figured out.

 “The girls on the beaches there wear all sorts of thongs, strings, dental floss, whatever you want to call it, so they get it all waxed. That’s why it’s called a ‘Brazilian.’ But I won’t do it. Not enough experience and I really hate to hurt people.”

Rip, rip, rip.

 “Sorry,” she offered again. “Me, I prefer laser treatments. Nothing grows down there anymore. It took about six treatments but now I’m done.”

 “That sounds handy,” I said. “Does the laser treatment hurt?”

 “It shouldn’t. But there’s a lot of science that goes into it. You need to know the person’s skin, how many hours they’ve been in the sun per day or in the tanning booths. I received mine at cosmetology school and they totally burned me.”

 “Really?” I said, now grabbing the sides of the table with my hands because she was going closer and closer to that one-inch strip of paper that was posing as underwear. I kept thinking that I had only wanted enough taken off so that it didn’t peek out of the bathing suit and that I had NOT signed up for a Brazilian nor a sort of pubic Mohawk. But I was too intimidated to say anything. I mean, this woman had survived laser burns!

 “Yeah, I was really mad. I had a wedding to go to the next day and the teacher was using me to instruct the class. She got caught up answering someone’s questions and she left the laser on too long and it singed me. I had these white blotches all over my skin. The wedding pictures were ruined!”

So caught up in her tale of horror I was that I didn’t realize how long she had been waxing and re-waxing and ripping one particular area.

 “This section just isn’t cooperating,” she said. “The hairs are too curly… I think I’ll snip them and then come back and try again.”

 “Okay,” I said. I mean she was the boss, what did I know from waxing? So she snipped away with a pair of scissors borrowed from a hair dresser and then began liberally applying wax all over my upper left leg. Rip, rip, rip. This was thankfully quicker and less painful as there are muscles and fat to help buffer nerve endings, unlike the bikini area.

For some reason, probably sensing I was a willing audience, who wouldn’t mind a little distraction, she decided to regale me with the tale of her breast reduction.

 “Best thing I ever did,” she said. “I’d been wanting one since I was thirteen. Over night I had these huge watermelons on my chest and I had such terrible back problems. My mother refused to pay for it but finally, when I turned eighteen, she gave me the surgery for my present. My fiancé thinks it has really improved my self esteem…”

 “You’re getting married?” I ventured. Rip, tear, rip, tear.

 “Well, not for five years. I mean, I want him to have to WAIT for me, if you know what I mean?”

I didn’t really know what she meant, but it I nodded in agreement.

 “Can you turn over?” she asked, “so I can do the back of your legs.”

That shouldn’t be a problem I thought, until I felt all of the wax still caked onto my bikini area and the front of my thighs.

 “Um, I’m kind of sticking all over,” I said.

 “Ah, don’t worry, I’ll get all the wax off you before you leave.”

 “Okay,” I said grimacing, the wax sticking to the towel and the sheet of hygienic paper covering the massage-shaped table, which unfortunately was not being used for a massage right now.

Getting a little nervous, I thought I’d pipe in with one known fact.

 “You know, the reason I don’t get waxed too often is because I have fair skin and it can give me terrible rashes. Is there a cream you can put on after you take the wax off?”

 “Oh sure,” she said in that bubbly voice. She showed me a bottle of brown-tinged cream with some medicinally exotic name on it. “It will color your skin a little bit, but it really helps to soothe the waxed area. Once you take a bath the color will come off.”

That sounded just fine. I remembered the first time I was waxed. I felt slippery and beautiful and free of follicles. I wanted to just walk around the house in my underwear and run my hands over my thighs…only six hours later the rash began to take a hold. My little flippers became covered in flaming red dots, then swelled and stayed that way until the hair grew back in. I didn’t know what was worse, to leave the hair as it was or to flash red-blotchy irritated skin around the poolside.

When I returned to the beauty salon with that question, I had an older woman doing the treatment who explained that the more I got it done the less it would hurt and cause rashes. She was right. But unfortunately, post- skirt bathing suit it had been a while, and I could feel the redness lurking underneath the newly plucked and polished skin.

Her clipping became more frantic now and her conversation shorter. She told me about the job she had prior to becoming a beautician. “It was sad. I worked with kids in Poughkeepsie and their parents would come to the day care and buy drugs or sell drugs and you knew what these kids were coming home too. Some of them were famished so I’d bring in snacks for them. I wanted to take them all home with me. I mean my mother was wonderful. If she caught me smoking then she’d make me eat an entire pack of cigarettes until I became sick…”

Clip, clip, clip. Rip, rip, rip.

 “I just love kids,” she said. Then in the same breath she said, “But I never want to have them! I’m not going to get fat and deal with stretch marks and all that…okay, turn back over.”

This was getting impossible. The wax she had applied earlier to the bikini area, or more like the way-too-close-to-the-off-limits area, had hardened. I was completely stuck to the table.

I pried myself off and suggested again that we should take the wax off with whatever product it was that she used to do that.

 “Don’t worry,” she said again, “I just want to finish that area that was causing the problem.”

Instead of taking the wax off, she began to put more on. I could see her checking the clock nervously and ripping off those strips with much more vigor and fewer sorries than before.

I decided it was time to lift my head and peer down towards the region that was troubling the beautician. Well, it should have troubled her because it was so far in that besides my husband,  a gynecologist, or the doctor that helped me give birth, NO ONE should be privy to inspecting that area anyway, thong or no thong, Brazil or New York.

 “You really don’t have to go that far in,” I said, clenching my teeth as she ripped and ripped some more.”

 “Oh good,” she said. “Well, you may want to shave there to make it even with the other side,” and without taking a breath announced that she was done. “Gotta go, I’m supposed to meet my fiancé for dinner.”

She took some of the brown cream and spread it quickly around my thighs, but not the bikini area, stripped off her gloves, looked at the clock again, and told me to get dressed and meet her out front.

That’s it? I thought. Well, she does have dinner plans and I did have a problem area and now have a meeting to go to myself...

I had to pry the towel off as clumps of wax, hair, and bits of skin came off with it. I looked down. Yes, my legs looked aquatic but my bikini area was red and angry and only had small portion of hair left on the pudenda, more towards one side than the other.

 “I didn’t want a Brazilian!” I thought, but it was too late and now she was on her way to dinner and I was rushing to a meeting and the hard reality is, waxing mishap or no, I’m missing an important gene.

The gene? The one my sister and my mother have that somehow skipped my DNA coding. I got the red hair, sure, and the longer legs, but they both have the “assertive” gene. Not overly assertive mind you, not obnoxious, but a healthy regard for themselves and their bill of rights as applied to all situations.

What I should have done was to tell her to come back and make sure all of the wax was off and that the anti-reddening cream was spread all over me and ask her if she could finish the job she started.

But did I do that?

No. Instead I put my own underwear back on and then tried to put my trousers on which was quite a maneuver as they would get stuck with each new patch of wax they encountered. I hobbled up to the front desk, trying to pluck my pants from sticking to my thighs as gracefully as could be managed, which was not that graceful, and paid the receptionist.

Not only did I not assert myself, but I felt compelled to leave a tip. Once a waitress, always a waitress. I’m morally, spiritually, kharmicly incapable of not leaving a tip, no matter how ill-deserved it is—and this one was as ill-deserved as they come. My beautician or mortician as she should more appropriately called had already slipped the receptionist the bill and was headed out the door with her very short, very bald fiancé who was clad in over-sized Tommy Hilfigger attire. Because of the searing pain between my legs I decided I hated them both.

I rushed home, screaming as I entered and leaped upstairs, past our three little kids and my husband and jumped in the shower.

 “It won’t come off, I can’t get it off!”

My husband and children quickly piled into the bathroom find out what was the matter.

 “The wax!” I said. “Soap won’t take it off. It’s killing me!”

They all started to laugh and I banned them from the bathroom.

I then secured the drain, let the tub fill up and quickly reached for my husband’s razor. I had only five minutes to make my meeting and so decided I had no other alternative but to shave the wax off. I did this in such a mad frenzy, trying to both extract the wax with a razor and even up my Brazilian-like bikini job, so that when I finally got out of the bathtub there was nothing but a pencil-line mustache tuft of hair left.

 “Oh, Mon Dieu!” exclaimed my husband. “What did they do to you?”

He started lecturing me on my need to be more forceful, how I should just march right back in there and demand my money back and that the wax be taken off…on and on and on.

He was right, of course, but my groin area was now so flaming red and excruciating and missing patches of my pale skin that instead of leaving for the meeting and eventually our romantic overnight the following day feeling like a newer, more follicle-free version of myself, I felt more like a skin-graft patient who had just checked out of the burn center.

As I stopped to get coffee on the way to my meeting, I ran into a friend.

 “Why are you walking like that?” she asked. “Did you sprain your ankle?”

 “No, not exactly,” I said, still trying to peel my pants off my waxy legs and shift my thong even higher up so it wouldn’t touch the skinless patches.

 “Well, what is it?” she asked, eyeing me strangely.

I gave her a brief rundown and then asked her, “Do you know what a Brazilian is?”

She did and said she tried to give herself one once and the outcome was dreadful. “You know, there’s just no pleasant way of going about it. Once it begins to grow in, it itches like a son-of-a-bitch. There are all these little prickly hairs poking out in every direction in the most sensitive area on your body! I’m done,” she said emphatically, “Never again.”

I did make my way up to the local drug store after the meeting and found an over-the-counter product that was supposed to ease razor-burn and I stocked up on gauze pads. Both helped ease the pain somewhat, and along with the natural aloe products that my mother gave me. But all in all, it just wasn’t a pretty sight.

We did make it to our getaway and it was romantic—not because I couldn’t wear underwear all weekend—but because it was our first time away together without our three children. And the backdrop, the Mohonk Resort, is as beautiful as it comes, wax-burn or no.

But I never did make it to the pool or the mineral bath, no matter how Brazilian my bottom-half had become. Instead, we hiked and skated, read and relaxed by the fire—all more appropriate winter activities, and ones that did not require torture treatments before signing up.

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