Friday, May 15, 2009

Wax On, Wax Off

Have you seen the new Target ads? The ones that have a man painting his wife/girlfriend’s toes in one shot and the next shot is a screen reading “the new manicure.” It is a series of items like this, pretty much telling everyone in America that there are ways to still pamper yourself and save money. And those ways start at Target.

Taking that theme to heart, and knowing that I needed to save a couple of dollars, I decided to try at home waxing.

This wasn’t my first foray, mind you. I tried it in college and found it a complete waste of time and money. But I figured they have had to make advances in this area by now, right? Plus I read in one of my trashy magazines about a new product that was suppose to be awesome, easy and gentle and just the next best thing to having it done at a salon.

Umm, yeah, no.

Here’s the thing. There is a reason someone else gets paid to do this to us.

I picked up the product while I was in Allentown. The box was covered with warnings that I should read all the directions completely before I even attempted to heat up the wax.

Which I totally did. The thing is, I guess I didn’t follow them, exactly. For instance, the directions suggest starting with an easy area of the body -- like the legs -- before using this on a trickier part. But my legs didn’t need waxing. My trickier part did. So I ignored that suggestion.
The directions also said, when waxing the tricky part, start with small patches of wax. Right, like I have time for that. So I compromised and started with a medium-size patch. Applied in the direction of the hair, let it cool a bit and then pulled in a quick, upward motion.

OH DEAR LORD.

I didn’t even get half the strip off. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and my leg jerked involuntarily. This is where the professional comes into play. They can rip the wax right off in a swift, upward motion. Because they can’t feel the pain. You on the other hand can, and your body will stop you half way (or not even half way) through.

So there I sat, in my undies on my bathroom floor with a piece of blue wax still adhered to my skin.

It reminded me of a trip to Daytona Beach we took in college for Spring Break. We were there for crew, but we got one half-day off. And on that half-day, a lot of the girls were going to the beach. Before they did, Casey, decided she was going to try home waxing strips that she picked up at the drug store. She put the strip on, but then didn’t have the courage to rip it off and so she ran around the houseboat freaking out about what she was going to do now. Eventually she ripped it off and because it was one of those cheesy products I spoke of earlier it pulled next to nothing out and so she just rinsed the rest of the wax off and ended up shaving.

If only that were my dilemma. While this wax may not be gentle, it was way effective and so I just had to suck it up and pull.

I contemplated waddling to the kitchen to do a couple of shots of vodka first, but decided drinking and then applying hot wax to my tricky area would almost definitely end with me in the emergency room telling my story to Resident Dreamboat (because of course he would be there).
It took two more tries before I got it all off.

At this point I could have left my trickier area looking like Steve Carrell’s chest in “40 Year Old Virgin” but I was so impressed with just how well the wax worked (and was already forgetting how painful it was) so I dipped the spatula back in the pot and started the process again; this time heeding the advice of the instructions to just cover a small area.

Yeah, it still hurt, but it didn’t take three tries to get it all off.

And then I did it again, and wondered if this is how sadio-masochists gets their start.

4 comments:

jandrews310 said...

Hahaha this cracks me up.

I tried the same thing this past weekend, even had the involuntary leg jerk. Got 3/4 of the way thru waxing my lady bits and couldn't endure the pain any longer. Ended up with a vag-stache until I had the discretion to shave the rest off.

Never. Again.

Tina Marina said...

HAA!

Not to go all TMI, but I was planning on getting one of those kits, but now... no.

Gabe said...

This had me rolling. And reminded me of high school, when my cousin and I tried to make sense of a similar product. I can still hear the muffled scream she let out.

Anonymous said...

Why do you do this to yourselves? Adult women are not supposed to look like that. Only children should. This is not healthy in any way.

Don't buy into it.