OK… I did it. I splurged (and I’m REALLY not sure if that word can apply to THIS situation!) and got a Brazilian waxing job. Yes, people, I paid someone to pour hot wax on my “hoo hoo” and RIP the hair off. It falls into that category of paying a dentist hundreds of dollars to torment you for a root canal. At some point your lizard brain is saying… “WHY??!!”
I’d read up and came prepared. Which consisted of “braced for the pain” and untrimmed for 3 weeks. Now I’d self waxed my face and once tried to wax my leg hairs so I knew the type of pain to expect. ….Although age & 3 kids have managed to knock out most of my leg hairs. How, you ask? I don’t know. All I know is when I first got pregnant in the last months, I developed a slight rash on my calves and lower thighs. Hair stopped growing wherever the rash was. It wasn’t a BIG rash.. just bumpy skin, no itching or scaling.. just little bumps. The rash stayed throughout my breastfeeding, straight into the next pregnancy and so on for the 6 years I was either pregnant or nursing a baby. When I weaned my last son, the bumps went away and the leg hair never grew again. I still have very sparse hairs that grow near my knee and along my shin, but they’re no where near as dark as the horror they were when I first hit puberty! (Which explained why in when I was first dealing with this trauma in puberty my mother always counseled me to naturally bleach my leg hairs in the sun with lemon juice instead of shaving… cuz she’d had 3 kids and barely had leg hair!.. Hippy!)
But I digress. (A LOT! Sheesh)
The waxing place was very nice. Indian, so there was Bollywood clips on the t.v. and twangy twangy music playing. It was amazingly clean.
They led me to a little room in the back, perfect for massage or waxing. I changed into the cover they provided and got onto the table. She came in and we discussed what I wanted done. A full Brazillian gets ALL the hair from your “special place” including the “back” area. Its different from a bikini waxing which is just all those “extra” hair that show if your wearing bikini bottoms, around your legs, etc.
I explained I wanted a Brazilian but with, what the men call, a “landing strip”. Because while I don’t want pubic hair, I also don’t want to look like a 12-year old! I think next time I might go for a little arrow. (I’m tempted to do a question mark but I think that’s beyond her talents!)
She trims my hairs down to some level she’s satisfied with and then asks me if I’m ready. Sure, answers the ignorant woman. So she spreads a bit of hot wax, not warm, hot! But it felt surprisingly good. My mind immediately distracts itself with the thought on how this sensation puts a whole new light on all those porn I watched where they dripped hot candle wax on… YEOW!! (as she rips.)
And Yikes and OHMYGOD!! As she rips two more times in the same area. And so it went, over and over again for about 15 or 20 minutes. She’d apply wax to an area and rip it 3 times, then powder it while I relearned how to breath! Some areas hurt more than others. Obviously. The worst being the inner labia. (I shudder at the memory cuz that is just NOT designed to be taught enough for hair pulling!) And its not that first rip that hurts the worst.. its the consecutive two that kill ya. Your body screams that initial protest and you expect the pain to fade, but then two more just seem to escalate it to a level where you’re trying NOT to crawl backwards as fast as possible.
With every application I’m asking myself if this is REALLY better than shaving? Is it worth the time, pain and money? WILL I actually do this AGAIN? If I liked pain I’d have my tattoo by now! I’m compartmentalizing, compromising, negotiating with myself. Suggesting that I might be able to try this at home. After all I do have the waxing kit and willing men to help should I desire it. That might eliminate the costs. And I chastise myself for being a wus, after all they explained that often it gets easier and easier every time because less hair grows back each time. Only time will tell on THAT score.
Oh, but the worse wasn’t over. After she felt she’d done all she could with the wax and I was holding back as firmly as I could the desire to holler, “Good enough!” She told me she wanted to thread the last few hairs the wax missed. She explained the process, she would use a fine thread to hook those errant hairs and pull them out. No, I don’t know exactly “how” this works, my eyes were tearing too much and I was flat on my back so I really couldn’t SEE anything!
But after 5 minutes of THAT my compulsive completer/good patient was beaten into submission by my lizard brain and I told her that I was satisfied and done. She washed and powdered the area and I got dressed.
My crotch looked like I had 3rd degree burns but it was smooth! lol.
Ok.. so the downside. TP stuck to me for days! No matter how much you wash that area it just feels like there is STILL a microscopic coating of wax. And my body reacted JUST like razor burn for almost 5 days! So for the first week I swore this was NOT better than shaving because I still had all the down side of shaving!
Then I hit the upside. It lasts oh soooo much longer than shaving. Its been almost 4 weeks and it still looks very good and feels wonderful. A few of the hairs didn’t get “plucked” by the waxing as much as broken off, so those grew back rather quickly, but they are few and far between and I’m tempted to pluck them myself.
The jury is still out on whether this will be something I do regularly. But it was definitely worth the experience!
I wonder if it would hurt less if I was self-medicated…..