Ritual is a lovely thing. It implies that survival is under control enough to indulge in something a bit higher on Maslow's hierarchy. Beauty ritual is that for me. It is a way to state to myself and to the world that I have handled the emergencies well enough and effectively enough in my life to be at a place where I can think about adornment. It's not a superficial thing, no. It's a way of acknowledging distance from personal emergency.Case in point: I recently had some dental surgery with what has turned out to be, yet again, another dentist I absolutely will not want to work with again. After feeling for several days after like I had been taken out in a back alley and beaten within an inch of my life, I went to the emergency hospital. A series of blood work ensuring I am not dying of a staph infection resulting in an uncovered 350.00 even though I have the "best" insurance on the planet, leaves me rethinking surrendering to any emergency short of flat lining. I am sick of problems, frankly. As people approaching midlife we are experiencing human frailty. We are seeing that we should have taken better care of our teeth, that we should have flossed. Or we are seeing that inactivity and sitting behind a desk has caught up with us, or that the human animal's original life expectancy has not evolved enough on an evolutionary scale to include parts that last. Illness in all of its forms just simply sucks. It is the ultimate time waster, I resent it. I resent giving my time and energy to it. I resent having it as focus.
So when it has to be a focus for us--whether my allergies or asthma, or dental work, or your ulcer or diabetes or anything else, it occurs to me that we are giving away the precious seconds to it. We are trading moment by moment our lives away. How will we focus? I would far rather focus on something beautiful, something above survival, just for the sanity it brings.
And who is to say that a positive focus doesn't change reality? I think it does. "That which we think about expands." I refuse to think about things I don't want in my life. That includes illness. So enough said, onto the WAX.
For about a billion years women have been adorning themselves. Cleopatra was no stranger to the henna rinse of the rings of eyeliner, Marie Antoinette had some pretty serious dos. Women have always wanted to gild the lily. I am all for it. Maybe it's spa mentality, maybe its just knowing that if I can take a moment to get a massage or do my hair, or fix my make up or buy perfume I am enjoying living in my body and enjoying the pleasure it gives me. It means I have some pride in myself, I have some healthy ability to indulge myself.
Now obviously this can be taken to an extreme. I just reread a recent news story that pops up occasionally about some twisted woman who has had multiple plastic surgeries in an effort to look like Barbie. In spite of the awesome shoes, Barbie, you are seriously plastic. However, I do commend her attempts to run a veterinary clinic, teach underprivileged children, pilot an airplane and keep up a dream house, all while working some serious damn "f-me" pumps. You go, Barbie. Now Barbie's real-life twisted sister with all the plastic surgery, naw. This girl is messed up and I have about a million different better uses for her money like first a great shrink and failing that a very large donation to a soup kitchen. So, while I am not about to get cut into pieces for a beauty ritual I might get dyed and plucked and sprayed a bit for the joy of enjoying my own skin.
Enter the WAX. (This is your last chance to leave, gentlemen, I suggest you do.)
I have been in recent years someone who has given up the eyebrow pluck. It is just a huge pain and as all of us ladies know in recent years it's a very tricky thing to see the reflected and offending eyebrow hair in a mirror clearly. So I have taken to eyebrow waxing. It's relatively inexpensive, its quick and easy, unless your stylist has some sort of DTs they can't mess it up too much (Ha, more later on this one!) In short, it's a great fix to an annoying problem. And Voilà! I am suddenly five years younger looking with these great big baby greens all open and wide-eyed.
So being a fan of the eyebrow wax it has occurred to me that being an animal I have lots of other interesting places I can wax. This alarmed me and embarrassed me. I had all sorts of preconceived notions about "who" did this and how they must look and that they were probably all porn stars or at the very least extremely young in un-lived in (but adult) bodies. I see everyone who has ever had anything other than an eyebrow wax as about 27 and a supermodel. Even though, I still really wanted to give it a go. I thought it would be a perfect bathing suit solution. I just had it in my mind that I wanted to do it. A friend of mine (younger, thinner, not sporting a post-baby body) did it and raved about the results. I thought I would do it when I reached some perfect pinnacle of perfection. I had some magic number in my head about weight, I had some ideal number of months of workouts being consistent in my life that would render me worthy of this beauty ritual.
And then I went to California on a trip and happened to see the waxing studio near my Massage Envy and I thought I could do this in an out of town location and if something horrible happened it would be like the ultimate in Vegas slogans--what happened there, stayed there. So I booked an appointment.
Now it is true that when I had the eyebrow portion of the treatment done an out of control wax brush dripped wax on my beautiful haircut and the technician was actually forced to give me a manicure scissors so I could cut the wax-covered wisp of hair near my forehead off myself. I am sure she was mortified and frankly I'm no snob--I have taken a manicure scissors to my shining glory for far less. I assured her it was no big deal.
The other part. Well, let me tell you. If you are going to get a bikini wax, a full or even the ultimate Brazilian, do not, for the love of God, watch people doing it or reacting to their first time on YouTube. There is such a thing as too much information. Do what I did. Take a number of Ibuprofen. Have a cocktail or if you object to drinking and driving take a half a Valium. And go. Don't judge yourself. These people do this for a living. They expect you to patronize their establishment. They don't think you are walking in to have your cards read, they know you want hair ripped off your body with hot wax. Live a little.
So how do I feel? I think it has been some combination of a silky mermaid swimming lithely through the ocean feeling the water move against my skin in some sort of natural whole-body embrace and a female superhero. Or maybe I feel like you do when you have incredibly sexy lingerie under your business suit. You know and they don't know, but the secret energizes you. It adds some subtle power to your movements; you are self aware in a luxurious, almost decadent, way. If I was candy, I would be Godiva. I feel seriously pleased with myself.
But more than the thing I did itself is the realization that I reached some sort of level of self acceptance where I suddenly felt I didn't need to hide, where I could revel in my body for itself with its flaws and its history and its own special tattoos of life experience.
Do I suggest you do it? Not necessarily, but I do suggest you do that one thing you have put off that you would really like to do for yourself, for your indulgence, for your body--and I suggest you do it today.
Love--
Beauty
