Personal Grooming is a Pain in the...
This post is for the ladies only. Keep reading at your own risk.
It’s summer and with the hot weather comes a lot of upkeep. You know what I mean. Starting at the toes, right up the hair on your head. There is a lot of work that has to be done. Most if it painful, expensive and time-consuming.
But yet, we (or at least I) still do it. I would be afraid to know the amount of hours and money I have spent on “beautifying”. According to a recent survey, men had not idea how much time women spend on grooming, I don't even have an idea.The most ridiculous part of it is that each procedure is done in a different location, eyebrows threaded in one part of the city, waxing only done by my person at another location and the toes, well that is somewhere else too. And I’m not one of those shiny, all fixed-up types. Right now my toe polish is peeling and my gray roots are coming in.
It wasn’t that long ago that a pair of tweezers and a razor were part of the morning routine and there were no secondary people brought in to micromanage your hair growth. There weren’t appointments to be made, parking, paying and tipping. You didn't devote hours of your leisure time reading out-of-date crappy magazines while people spoke about you in a different language. Just a little pluck and shave, maybe some clear polish and you were good to go. Now there are the correct eyebrow shapes and questions about how far you want your bikini waxer to go.
Bikini waxes may just be one of the craziest things women do to themselves, and I’m smarting from one just now. Pouring hot wax on your nether regions and then ripping out the hair? Come on! Who invented this procedure? And why do I keep going? Remember when you used to shave a little bit of the hair off just so it didn’t poke out of the bathing suit? And now getting a bikini wax is a political, sexual and financial decision. Do you want a full, part, Brazilian, French? Blogger Jessica Gottleib has written a few times on the pain of waxing; in her post “My Labia are Not Feminists” check out the video for more thoughts on why we do what we do.
In case you were wondering, I don't like to go completely clean. Since we are a naked family I don't want my kids to wonder where all my hair went, and why I look more like my four-year old down there then a grown woman.
I was shocked when my waxer told me that young teenagers are coming in for Brazilians, the worst part is that their mothers are bringing them! When did we learn to hate body hair so much? Is it part of our obsession with youth? Cleanliness? Do we do it for men or ourselves? Or we just like to find new and interesting ways to pay people?
