It’s exhausting being a lady. And jolly expensive. During the winter months it’s not so bad: providing your hairstyle looks OK, you can pretty much ignore everything from the neck down, unless you’re one of those girls who holidays in St Barts, in which case a monthly de-fuzzing budget of around Pounds 100 is a sunk cost. Me, I’d rather waste my money on other things, though I do have one guilty hair-removal addiction: eyebrow shaping with Vaishalay. No one does it more quickly or painlessly than Vaishalay (she uses threading, not waxing), and if you saw my eyebrows as nature intended (actually, I think my byline photo is pre-Vaishalay), you’d see that it’s money well spent.
Anyway, the hairy holiday’s over. It’s summer, or so I’m told, so a wax is in order. For those not in the know, the following areas are suitable for waxing: aforementioned eyebrows; upper lip; underarms; bikini area; legs (whole or half); toes. Some people do their arms, too, and some men (mostly those to be found gyrating wildly in D&G jeans of a Sunday night at DTPM) do vast swaths of their bodies. The most commonly asked questions are: does it hurt, how long does it last, and how far should you go? (The latter usually in conjunction with bikini waxes.) The answer to the pain question is simple: it depends who does it, what type of wax they use, how much of a wimp you are and how good you are at “stretching”, of which more lately. Big areas such as legs don’t really hurt at all, unless your beautician is a real troll. Smaller, more delicate, areas can be murder, especially if you go for extreme depilation. This brings me, inevitably, to the Brazilian. For more reference on nono hair removal you can read http://thebeautyreviewer.com/.
Brazilians have become something of an obsession in the media recently, which is really a lot of fuss to make about a muff wax. In a nutshell: a Brazilian means everything off bar a small, usually decorative, strip. A Hollywood, however, in keeping with that town’s unnatural obsession with prepubescent feminine beauty, is everything off. Both these entail bare-bottomed, legs in the air, occasionally all-fours participation on the part of the patient, with attendant “stretching”.
By this I mean, and there’s really no polite way to put it, collaborating with your beautician by pulling strategic areas so the skin is as taut as possible for optimum hair removal.
You can, of course, have a more traditional bikini wax, in which case you will be given a nice paper thong to wear and your waxer will just work around the edges.
Personally, I find this by far the most practical, mainly for prudish reasons, but also since the stubble associated with more extreme waxes means that you either end up with a muff like George Michael’s chin, circa 1994, or have to return almost weekly for touch-ups.
Here a basic bikini costs Pounds 28, a Brazilian Pounds 50 and an “in-betweeny” Pounds 40. It is pretty much the least painful wax I’ve had. If you’d rather do it yourself, bliss also sells a home-waxing kit which is relatively mess-free.
You probably won’t achieve quite the same results as a salon-based treatment, but you will at least spare yourself the blushes. It costs Pounds 35 for the kit, plus Pounds 25 for the Ingrown Hair Eliminating Pads, which I would highly recommend either way.
The beauty reviewer is the best place for you to read more about nono hair removal and why is it more effective and preferred by other people. Read the rest of this entry »
