I’ve been waxing since I was a teenager. Growing up in the modern world you soon learn that our relationship with body hair is contradictory.
In winter it keeps us warm but having smooth silky body-parts is synonymous with being attractive.
I’d love to say my attitude to body-hair hasn’t been formed by a culture that expects women to be as smooth as Barbie-dolls and not embrace the raw, hairy, smelly, oozing creatures we really are… But if I’m honest, I personally enjoy being hairy and hairless in tune with the seasons.
Winter is a time for long hairs, self-made woolen tights, and murkins.
Summer is time to be bald and glossy.
Getting waxed is an experience. It’s not the pain, it’s so quick these days, ripping the wax off is akin to a sharp slap. No, it’s the awkwardness that gets to you.
While you lie on a plastic coated table, knees to your chest, you think about how intimately you now know the woman who’s face is in your nether regions. You desperately scramble for conversations topics as she plucks stray hairs and asks you to raise your knees so she can wax your arsehole.
As mortifying situations go, I had arrived on this particular occasion after a particularly cold winter. Self-conscious of my 70’s styling I was relieved when my waxer efficiently worked her way through the underbrush.
She asked me questions about my life, told me about her training to become a police woman and I had almost forgotten what she had been staring at and where I was, when she ushered me to get dressed after a delicate smear of moisturiser.
As she snapped off her rubber gloves and leaned over the register, she asked if she could call to remind me of our next appointment. I blushed, remembering how embarrassing it was to be plucked like a chicken. She gave me a saucy wink and said she was looking forward to it.
Best first date ever.