rest of my life in any and every hair-removal situation.
“Am I normal?”
She said that I was, but I didn’t believe her.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“We’ve all got hair,” she said.
I knew that we all had hair, but that wasn’t the question. I wanted to know where exactly I stood on the hairy scale, because that was becoming the problem. Ladies were ripping out their hair before I got a good look at it; therefore I was feeling like a beast among a hairless breed.
She proceeded to rip out the hair that jumped the border—about half an inch—but then she spotted the hair on my stomach. For quite a while, I’d had a light “happy trail” from my belly button downward. It was the inspiration for a nickname—Happy—that I’d acquired at fifteen. For a while, I’d considered the name cute.
“You want me to get that, right?” she said, spreading the wax on it before I answered.
“Why, is that not good?”
Rip.
“Well, you probably want to get rid of it,” she said, throwing my happy trail in the trash.
And that’s how I learned that apparently happy trails aren’t as happy as they sound.
By the age of twenty, I was finally coming to terms with the fact that no hair was considered good hair except for the hair on your head, eyelashes, and eyebrows, and those only if they were in the right shape. Arm hair, it seemed, got a pass as well, even though it didn’t look any different from leg hair, which is weird. But even toe hair had to go. I didn’t even know that I had toe hair, but then it turned out that I did, which was bad. I’d always remember that I forgot to get rid of it when I’d fold my torso over my legs in yoga, and then I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from staring at it.
For the crotch, news of the Brazilian style—going completely bare—that would soon sweep the USA had not yet reached my ears. I still thought it was normal to keep all the pubic hair except for the bits that peeked out from my bathing suit. And though I trimmed a little off the sides every now and again, I was proud to have a bush. And I continued with the normal stuff—shaving, plucking, and waxing. I also fell into a dependent relationship with Sally Hansen home wax strips—prewaxed plastic in a rectangular shape. I just had to rub it between my palms to heat up the wax and then I could rip out my hair myself. The problem was that I had issues with getting all the excess wax off, so by the end of the day, I’d end up with an accumulation of colorful fuzz and lint that made wherever I waxed look like my skin was growing patches of sweatshirt.
When I went to Spain for my year abroad as a college junior, I got my legs waxed while being strapped vertically to a wall with a leather belt. I felt a bit vulnerable, but I didn’t question it as long as the wax did its job.
I went to India in 2003, the year I finished undergrad, to work at a newspaper, and got my entire face threaded. I said I wanted only the upper lip and eyebrows done, but Smita just kept going. She touched my cheeks and said, “Face?” I shrugged. She took that as a signal to wind up her thread and tear out all the fuzz from my cheeks, chin, and jowls.
Paid professionals were always trying to get rid of more and more of my hair. It happened again when I went to a bikini-waxing joint in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a few years later. I just wanted a little off the sides, as the bush had been growing out for quite a while. When the waxer saw me—saw that part of me—she looked into my eyes with a fortune-teller’s boldness and shook her finger back and forth.
“The man does not like dis,” she said. She put her fingers toward her tongue, pretending to pinch out hairs. “Plaaaa plaaaa,” she said. Then she got all dramatic and faked a male choking episode. She slathered on the hot wax and said calmly, “Very good dat you are here.”
When we were done, she unzipped her pants to show me her bald pussy. “Look at it,” she said. “Look. No hair.” Then she tried to convince me to sign up for laser. “Plaa plaa,” she explained again as she zipped up her pants. “They do not like dat.”
The only thing I really came to enjoy about hair removal was the inevitable ingrown. There is nothing—and I mean it, nothing—more fundamentally satisfying than extracting a hair that’s been growing in the wrong direction. Period. Call it my nurturing side.
Little did I know the worst was yet to come. What happened next made me yearn for the days when a blond mustache was my only problem.
I was twenty-three. I was about to start a one-year journalism master’s program at Columbia and was getting a facial at Mario Badescu Skin Care salon on East Fifty-second Street in Manhattan. Everything was going well until the buxom Russian woman examining my face with a bright light rubbed my chin.
“You zchuld git reed of dis,” she said.
How did she see them? I thought I was the only person who knew.
She busted my years of self-denial. Toppled them. Crushed them into tiny shards. It’s like when you have a big red volcanic pimple and you just convince yourself that you’re making it out to be a much bigger deal than it actually is and most likely no one notices it, but then some friend says, “Ouch, that looks like it must hurt.” And they are pointing at your big red volcanic pimple that no one is actually supposed to be able to see, so you say, “What must hurt?” and they say, “Your big red volcanic pimple.” And you cover your face with one hand and say, “Oh, you can see that?” And they say, “Well, it is a big red volcanic pimple.”
So it was true. I had chin hairs that people could actually see. They were real. Like, actually there.
Hairs growing out of my chin!
I mean, I knew about them, of course, but I also didn’t. I believe my inability to recognize them as an entity—as a growing, living, real part of my body—stemmed from my self-preservation instinct. I’d even plucked them before, but I’d managed to convince myself immediately afterward that I hadn’t. My chin was smooth, dammit!
But now the jig was up. I started scanning my chin every morning for one of those evil hairs to reappear. I began carrying tweezers and a mirror in my purse.
I told no one of this new calamity. At least when I discovered my upper-lip hair, I knew that other women shared my shame. Upper-lip waxes were offered at salons. I’d never seen a chin wax mentioned anywhere, and I didn’t want to ask anyone about it, in case they told me they’d never heard of such a heinous thing.
I started having these disturbing fantasies that totally freaked me out: I have a mental break and go to a loony bin, but there’s no one there to pluck me. When I envision Insane Mara, I’m more embarrassed about the stray hairs than I am about the fact that I’ve completely lost my mind and am trying to make love to a trash can.
Or what about when I’m old? Old Mara’s hands are going to be so shaky from all the meds and her eyesight will be deficient, so there’s no way she’s going to be able to pluck with any kind of proficiency.
Or maybe Old Mara has Alzheimer’s and her grandkids will come visit as she stares at a wall and thumbs the hem on her shirt. “Is Grandma a he or a she?” they’ll say. I’m more embarrassed for Alzheimer Mara’s hair than for the fact that she thinks her nephew is her husband.
Or I get run over by a car on some New York
