How to Give Yourself an At-Home Brazilian Wax*

*This gets a little graphic, depending on your boundaries (i.e., if you have a problem reading the correct names of girly bits). You have been warned.

PART THE FIRST: WHY
1. Look at the stock market and all the Op-Ed articles talking about unemployment rates, plummeting retail numbers, and all the foreign capital buying America.
2. Realize that, maybe, you should save the $80-plus-tip and give yourself the Brazilian that you so desperately need. (Your Vagina: "Hello? Is anybody there? I can't see. Helloooo? Hm. It's dark in here.")

PART DEUX: WHAT
1. Buy some Sally Hansen Extra Strength Brazilian Bikini Waxing and Shaping Kit (with No Mistakes Mirror) ($10.99)
2. Grab your spiffy Tweezerman tweezers (already purchased: $20)

PART THREE: HOW
1. Read directions. Remember especially to a) always put the wax on in the direction of hair growth - remember that in certain areas hair grows more than one way, b) not work in sections of more than 2 inches at a time, and c) work from the outside in.
2. Start at the outside, toward the back, with an appropriately-sized two inch region. Apply wax. Allow to cool to just the right consistency, then remove, quickly, against the hair growth.
3. Congratulate self on what a quick, clean job you did. Note that you don't know what you were doing wrong last time you tried this with a more expensive product, because that time you didn't even make it beyond the basic bikini line.
4. Continue with a second small region, then a third. Tweeze the stragglers as you progress. Realize you are possibly the best self-waxer ever, and should probably write on contract for Marie Claire and Glamour, because you obviously have a lot to offer.

PART FOUR: HUBRIS. IT GETS YOU EVERY TIME.
1. About half way through your right side, realize you are getting to a tricky part.
2. Choose this juncture to slather on too much wax, so that you accidentally put it on against the hair growth, over a large area, where the hair grows every which way.
3. Try to remove the wax strip. Try again. Try again. Start to cry a little, thinking about living the rest of your life as That Chick Who Got Sally Hansen Bikini Wax Permanently Glued to Her Vajayjay. Realize that you could probably get on Oprah or something, to warn other of the hazards of self-waxing.
4. Get your thumb nail caught on the top of the still-not-cooled wax while trying to pry if off for a fifth time.
5. Spend the next five minutes tugging up the wax in sixteenth-of-a-centimeter bits of progress. Genuinely ponder how likely it is that you might seriously maim yourself.
6. Finally get the godforsaken gob of wax OFF. Notice that, despite what you thought, it is apparently possible to give yourself a labial hematoma.

PART FIVE: HALFWAY THERE.
1. Realize that the wax has congealed to something resembling Nutella. Evil Nutella.
2. Straighten up from your weird hunched-yet-standing position to reheat the wax. Realize that your neck and back are now permanently stuck in a shape that resembles Quasimodo.
3. Return from the microwave and glance in your No Mistakes Mirror.
4. Realize that you did your genetically less hairy side first.
5. Wonder if you could rock an '80's-style half-short-half-long hairstyle... down there.
6. Realize you just... can't. Not matter how much you'd like to. Cry.

PART SIX: DELIRIUM
1. When your spouse inquires, tell him that you are, despite what it sounds like, not committing hara-kiri.
2. Ask your spouse whether there is possibly some vodka or other hard liquor in the house.
3. Unleash at string of colorful curses when he tells you, "No."
4. As you progress on your second, more daunting side, convince yourself that every little bump or blemish you see is probably vulvar cancer, and you are probably dying. Then realize your tumor is actually a spec of wax, or a spot of skin irritated by all the tugging and paiiiiiiiin.
5. Admit to yourself that no matter how flowery the idea of natural childbirth is (when the time eventually comes), you are not cut out for it.
6. Reheat the damn wax again, OMFG.
7. Daydream about becoming a professional waxer, but only taking appointments from women whom you know... and hate.
8. Resolve to tip your usual waxer, Ninetta, 50% next time you go. (Instead of 20. Not that you ever tip less than 20%. Because only assholes do that. In New York, at least.)

PART SEVEN: SWEET, SWEET RELEASE
1. Take off the last strip of hair. Stand there in the kind of unbelievable relief probably only felt previously by, say, POWs upon their release from captivity. Or by other women who have been boneheaded enough to attempt this self-Brazilian thing.
2. Feel a surge of pride at the fact that you actually. gave. yourself. a full. Brazilian. wax.
3. Realize that you have probably just ruined your twenty dollar ($20) Tweezerman tweezers, because the wax, she is not coming off.
4. Leave the bathroom and beeline for the kitchen. Glance at the stove clock and realize that you were at it for an hour and a half OMG.
5. Pour yourself a large glass of wine. Emphasis: Large.
6. As you walk, realize that your entire genital area is... well... numb. Pray to God that this is not permanent.
7. Invent a time machine. Go back in time to yesterday. Make an appointment with Ninetta. Pay her the $80 + 50% tip (because now you know how much she truly, truly deserves it). Avoid the whole At Home Self Brazilian charade.


Post Script (October 2012):
You know what I've JUST FOUND OUT?  After ALMOST FIVE YEARS of doing this?  (Yeah, I never bit the fiduciary bullet and went pro again.)  If you let the wax cool ~just enough~ but ~not too much~, the pain factor reduces by at least half.   With the Sally Hansen wax, I'd ballpark this point at "when the wax is still warm and malleable under your fingertips, but no longer makes an effort to attach itself to your fingernails."  Sorry, that's probably not very helpful.

Also, the post-wax oil?  Use it on your fingers and nails during waxing to keep the wax from sticking to them.


Post Post Script (Updated October 2012):
I hope you found this post educational, or at the very least, entertaining; it was certainly fun to write, if not so fun to research.  It is, however, a departure from my normal focuses on this blog.  Check out the Who, Why, What, and Where pages above to read more about what the blog is usually about.  I hope you stick around!

Bone density test?

Since today I woke up with a weak/tingling left arm, my hypochondria revved itself up into high gear (as it has been since Thursday morning, over one "symptoms" such as dizziness and fatigue), and presented an alluring list of possible causes: Parkinson's? ALS? Injured or slipped cervical disc? MS? I finally settled on the last one, particularly since I'm in the twenty-year average age range of diagnosis, when I stumbled upon the interesting if slightly elementary site About Face dot org, which led me back to a former haunting ground, The Something Fishy Website on Eating Disorders. On Something Fishy, I discovered not only a list of physical side effects of eating disorders (including low calcium, which can cause, among other things, weakness or tingling in limbs HEY-OOOOOH), but also a page I'd somehow not visited before: "They Said What?" - a compendium of insulting, ignorant, or otherwise socially dejecting statements made by caregivers (doctors, nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, or otherwise) to patients (suffering from any combination of the established variety of eating disorders.

The unedited page includes the grammatical and cognitive lapses from the original submissions, which helps it to retain an air of authenticity, in my perception. The page includes such gems as:

'Quotes from Doctors in the U.S. Military: "Bulimia is just an attention device" and "Bulimia is not a serious eating disorder"'

'During an inappropriate "pep" talk from a nurse she told me that when she was younger she had an eating disorder, but weighed much less than i did then.'

Okay, and here's my favorite:

'I am now completely recovered but recently was experiencing some chest pains. Due to my history of Anorexia I called the doctor on-call to ask him if I should go to the Emergency Room. I explained to him about the pain in my chest and told him of my history saying "you should know I've had a history of Anorexia Nervosa." He replied after a long pause, "Yeah, but that has nothing to do with your chest."'

(The emphasis on all those is from Something Fishy.)

This page and its quotes brought to mind for me, after reading enough of them, the more and less helpful things a therapist, doctor, or other medical professional has said to me. We'll ignore the less helpful things I've been told.

Ha ha, no we won't. That would be boring! Herewith, the least helpful and most ignorant things uttered to me by a medical professional aware of my disordered behaviors:


"112! You're really fattening up!" -- my pediatrician, when I was 5'3" and 15 years old. Nice job, Old White Male Doctor.



"I don't think most women would be upset about losing twenty pounds." -- a gastroenterologist seeing me because I'd lost 20 pounds due to horrific diarrhea (awesome...), fever and loss of appetite, apparently related to September 11th.



"Now that I see you, I'm not worried. I think you just need to eat three meals a day." -- the psychologist my mom made me see after coming back from Paris (winter 2002), when I weighed about 105 lbs., at 5'3". (Me, internally: "I'll show you worried, bitch. HA!")



"So... are you still on weight gain?" -- a meal leader (therapist), taking notes at the beginning of the meal at the PHP in Atlanta. (I started crying, and she got an earful on why that might not be positive to hear.) (I weighed under 105 lbs. at that time. Realistically, one would hope I'd still be on the weight gain program.)



Alright then. Now the most helpful and least ignorant things said to me by anyone (medical professional or otherwise) aware of my eating disorder:


"I can't let you come back to class until you've gone to the health center and gotten blood work and counseling." -- Joanne, who basically saved my life, because no one else wanted to call me out.



"A lot of my bulimic patients are shocked at their weight. It's okay to be surprised." -- my first monitoring physician, who told me I weighed 92 lbs. at 5'3", about two months after the brilliant psychologist who wasn't worried about me, after seeing me and all.



"You want to be special? You don't have to be anorexic to be 'special.'" -- Amy Smith-Barnes at the PHP in Atlanta.



I don't know what my point is in reiterating these various statements. I find it funny that I have none to add from my current therapist. My best guess about that is that I'll appreciate how she's helped me after we're done working together.

I have no "end" for the post. Just those thoughts, and the overhang that comes with them.

"An unusual billboard on the West Side Highway is turning some heads and stirring some controversy. Ingrid Kelley has more."

Watching New York 1 (a public station devoted to just local news of the 5 boroughs).

A segment came on about a "controversial billboard" at 44th and 12th Avenue, a heavily traveled commuter artery on the West Side of Manhattan. A company called Manhattan Mini Storage has a facility there. I've been to it to store the end-year files for my previous job. Manhattan Mini Storage is not a proponent of wasted space, so they advertise on the most visible side of their own building. The current advertisement, and the subject of the NY1 report? Here's the text:

YOUR
CLOSET
SPACE IS
SHRINKING
AS FAST AS
HER RIGHT
TO CHOOSE.

(A clothes hanger is imposed on the backgroung.)

The only male interviewee on-camera in this piece says: "Oh, I think it's kind of crazy that they put it up there like that. I think it's, um, a little disrespectful, I think it's, um, a little inconsiderate, I think, and it's big. And it's, it's not hidden, I, people can see it." [Yes, I get that he may have taken that exactly worded view to ensure a place on camera. The piece is introduced saying an offended woman emailed NY1 about the billboard.] All the other interviewees in this piece are women, and express pro-choice views on the billboard. To me, that does say something about NY1's journalistic determination. Maybe just the producer of this piece... But still.

To bring this into perpective, though, and to get back to the point I initially struck in my own head while watching the segment, let me paraphrase (I can't find them on Google Image) some other recent adds from Manhattan Mini Storage. These have appeared, over the last ten months or so, on bus stops, movie theaters, buses, subway platforms, cigarette butt stands outside bars, and free postcards. In other words, in places that reach, per capita, far more eyes than the billboard on 12th Avenue and 44th Street.

**
Your closet is tinier than a runway model's lunch
*
Your closet's so shallow it makes Paris look deep [they got a cease and desist letter for this one]
*
[from a plastic toy soldier] My owner's Ma stationed me here til there ain't so much real shooting
*
Your closet's scarier than Bush's agenda [Republican leaders raised hell about this one]
*
Your closet's so narrow it makes Cheney look liberal [curiously, not so much about this one]
*
The Democrats cleaned house, why don't you?
**
Some of the above ad templates can also be found in a no-longer-online article for the New York Sun entitled, "Storage Company Ads Too Political For Some Tastes."

In an older ad-campaign, the company was always lauded by some gay groups for an ad that featured text along the lines of storage items including: "Chemistry Set, Vinyl Albums, Boyfriend's Artwork" alongside the picture of a young man.

Perhaps it's just my registered Democrat self asking this, but why would the Pro-Choice billboard be such the "controversial" one? Why is this the one getting the TV coverage? (And why can't New York 1 be a little more broad than to have one man in the report, expressing the less-than-liberal view, while all the women halk for pro-choice.) (Not that I wouldn't have. Please. I would have been up there going on tangents about Bill Frist and John McCain and you don't even know whom.)

On a roll now...

And another thing about September 2001. The acting studio we went to was on 27th and Broadway. Some of the classroom windows faced north, and over the low-slung brick post-war apartment building that harbored some kind of porn operation (judging by the sign that read, "Hot Girls Paid Good," and the naked guy who wandered by the window one day, and just... hung out), our widows afforded the most idyllic view of the Empire State Building.

We all shared the feeling (literally - verbally shared it, later, at lunch) that we'd better keep an eye on the now-tallest New York landmark while we could see it, just in case a plane plowed into it, and we had to scramble downtown.

Obviously, that didn't happen, but most of us spent at least the rest of that semester glancing up and out of the windows when we ought to have been paying attention to the emotionally abusive scene study teacher who taught us in that room. Of course, you couldn't help but feel that she was human when she said, in her guttural tone, "It was a very different experience uptown." You could hear her helplessness, her pity, her realization that we were just kids, and we were hurting.

But downtown or uptown, afterward, the feeling was the same. (We're talking, of course, about the two weeks following, before anyone was allowed back into Lower Manhattan. After that, I self-censor any editorial, since I don't know the experience of going back "home," to a ghost town.) For two weeks afterward, the feeling all over, from Battery Park to Indian Point - and probably all over the country - was vulnerability. Exhaustion. Rolling anger. Tiptoeing fear. I remember worrying about a high school friend in Pittsburgh whose (Catholic) parents were born in India. How many stares would she get, from ignorant and paranoid assholes, and how would she defend herself? I remember being drained of any energy well before 4 p.m., and not being able to fall asleep until well past midnight. I'd lie in bed, probably reading Shakespeare, Euripides, or Racine, wondering why the hell I wasn't asleep yet? I remember the idea of rage, but the dearth of it. I should be angry, I always thought, and I am, but at whom? If I hold my breath as I walk through this subway tunnel, maybe they won't get me. Maybe nothing will happen to me here.

Meanwhile, the smoke and ash hung around for I don't remember how long. About a week after the actual day, a high school friend at the University of Georgia asked if it was "true that you can smell the bodies?" I said no, and after that one word, I haven't talked to her again. What kind of person doesn't know not to ask that?

But it was a strange time, for everyone, I'm sure. Whether you were in L.A., wondering if you would be hit next; or Georgia, wondering what the firsthand experience was like; or in the Midwest, earnestly telling the reporter from New York City how the Terrorists could certainly slip anthrax into the cheese supply at your local grocery store and that everyone was a target, meanwhile having no idea that an entire city of 12 million people hated your guts as the story got aired again and again... for everyone, not matter where, I'm sure it was strange. But it was probably a little stranger, seeing the smoke plumes and smelling the burning asbestos months after the fact.

"Yeah, we got out of class that day," my best friend told me a few months later. "You're in Kennesaw," I thought, "Why?"

"Can you imagine what it would be like if those buildings," my fiance gestured to a couple of modest skyscrapers on East 52nd Street, "just... toppled down on you?" I stopped walking. I stopped being glad we were on our way to dinner. This was nearly four years later. And I wasn't even that far downtown when the whole business occurred. "Oh stop," he said, during the late summer of 2005, staring up at the mercifully standing East 52nd office towers, "Stop being so dramatic."

"So," my mom introduced her cheeriest of cheery tones, "How are you doing with... the whole... September the 11th thing?" It was the five year anniversary.

"Wow," my lungs and mouth simultaneously and inadvertently wooshed, "That was subtle." I paused for a second. "Fine," I answered, in all honesty, "I've been working all day, and completely ignoring it."

"Oh!" She sounded relieved. "Okay. Good!" She didn't feel like getting into it anymore than I did. Awesome.


Anyway, September 12th rolled around pretty much as predicted. Everyone stopped talking about It. The newspaper headlines were about... something else, I have no idea what, because I forget, which is always nice. There weren't quite so many deadly serious, reflective local news bumpers at 5 and 6 o'clock. On the 12th, it was back to busted brothels, or something. The "n" key just broke off of my keyboard, and that can occupy my mind now. Seriously, you have no idea how annoying it was to just type that last sentence. And that last word - "sentence," that is. The "n" key is just a nubby little rubber thing right now. I wonder, if I just leave the plastic key cover off, if I'll get used to the feeling?

I guess you get used to a lot of feelings, and you feel them, and you accept them, or you ignore them, and eventually they go away, or at least just slink into the corner. You hope that you don't get used to feelings like love, and happiness, and gratefulness, and... let's say love again. You hope that the same rules don't apply to those happy feelings as apply to anxiety, and hopelessness, and anger, and fear. Looking at this whole September 11th business five years later, though, and also paying attention to the little human interaction I also had on September 12th, I'm inclined to say that you get used to, or at any rate, dismiss the positive emotional associations as much as you do the scarring ones. "If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work," or something. I guess. Also, if you don't know what that quotation is from, Google it, because you suck.

Whatever. I'm just glad it's September 13th. Three hundred sixty-something days to go.

I don’t like September 11th.

Five years later, I remember the major parts of my 11th in jolts and gasps. I remember how I woke up: Sarah burst in through my and Catherine’s bedroom door. Catherine was already at the gym; it was 8:50, and I was still asleep, dammit. My first class wasn’t until 10:30. Anyway, Sarah burst through my door, which was her bad habit: She wasn’t big on knocking. I was about to yell at her, but she was already yelling: "Turn on the TV! The World Trade Center is on fire! A plane hit the World Trade Center!" I immediately forgot about my invaded privacy, and the fact that it was fully 70 minutes before I had intended to wake up, and fumbled for the remote. Found it. Turned on the tv. Comedy Central - damn. Zero-zero-two. CBS. There we go. She wasn’t kidding, or even exaggerating, which is something never out of the question with Drama majors like us. Black, cement-thick smoke was billowing out of a gaping hole in the right-hand tower.

Then, my memory gaps forward. I think Catherine got back from the gym, after gaping on University Street with the other motivated people who were at Crunch before 9 a.m. I remember sitting on my bed, with Sarah and Catherine in the room, watching the second plane zoom in a sickening loop toward the left-hand tower. We were all screaming, "No! No," whether in disbelief or in horror or in shock and nausea, who knows now?

After that, my mind - five years later - jumps to watching the first tower collapse. Then, I think, I took a shower. After that, the second tower collapsed. I remember the male announcer gasping, "There is no more World Trade Center. The New York skyline is forever changed." Or something like that. Then, I got dressed and went to class. Because? What else was I going to do? On the way down, people were gathered outside of restaurants - doors open - and vans. Any radio in public earshot was on and up. The stories have circulated long ago now about free water being passed out, strangers cradling each other on the curb, unprecedented care being taken to be kind.

I reached my classroom to meet one other classmate; she lived downtown, and had made the trip uptown around 7:30, for another class. Her dorm was now covered in a blanket of ash, concrete, and people. I headed right back up to Union Square, and I don’t really remember the rest of the morning. At some point, Catherine and I wandered straight down the middle lane of Fifth Avenue (I have a great picture) to Washington Square Park. Hordes of people - only about half NYU students, which is fewer than usual - gathered around the fountain, staring dumbly at the columns of fat, bloated smoke billowing up from where the towers used to be clearly visible over Thompson Street. Or maybe Sullivan. I don’t remember anymore. Maybe we ate lunch and dinner (and breakfast?), maybe not. I’m pretty sure the impromptu memorial had already sprung up in Union Square just outside our door, and we probably went down. None of us had really cried yet. That came two nights later, when we all went to the Union Square memorial together. 


For now, numbness, shock, all the stereotypical first emotional reactions to grief. I think our R.A. called a floor meeting, to make sure everyone was there, and okay. There was an acrid, stinging smell in the air. Now we know it was burning metal, asbestos, and organic material that used to be people. We were all told not to turn on our air conditioners, and to take in the students whose dorms were below 14th Street, since the city below 14th Street would soon become like a refrigerator in a power outage: Dark, dank, slowly spoiling, with everyone crowding around it, wondering whether to open the damn door already, or to just leave it closed, because maybe, just maybe, nothing would spoil if you left everything be that was already in there.

The next day, we fled up to Central Park, and played Ultimate Frisbee on Sheep’s Meadow, or whatever it’s called. It was great: Sarah’s friend who was from Iowa, and in town to audition for a soap opera, was stuck in town, since his flight out that day had, of course, been cancelled. But he was the only reminder that everything wasn’t normal. That - and the fact that we were up at Central Park in the first place. We were lazy college kids. We didn’t really go above 34th Street if we didn’t have to. But we did. Everything was a world apart, until a seaside breeze - Manhattan is an island, after all - blew up north-northeast, and brought that metal-meets-fire smell with it. "Mmmmmm, World Trade Center," someone said.

Later that night, Catherine and I, along with two guys we knew at that time, wandered down to Houston Street. There we saw military tanks and garbage trucks lined up in some sinister can-can line, whether to haul trash or to set a army blockade, we didn’t know. But the only light was thrown from floodlights powered by huge generators, and it was creepy as all hell. Earlier that night, the movie theatre at Union Square was showing films for free, so we had gone to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch. We ran into Leah, and I hugged her just maybe harder than I’d ever hugged anyone, since she lived at Water Street, and we hadn’t yet heard the confirmations that no NYU students were hurt. By the time we got out and strolled down to Houston, not only the smell of burning steel had reached the air above Canal Street, but the smoke that pushed the smell forward had come out in full force. Everything looked foggy, like some scene from a Jack the Ripper movie. We went straight back up to 14th Street, walking a little faster than on the way down.

The next day, we threw our energies into making sandwiches for Ground Zero rescue workers in one of the NYU dining halls. We got really drunk. We got tattoos. We still maybe didn’t eat much. We go the official word that classes were on for Friday. We cried some more. We went to sleep, and woke up, and nothing else had gotten flown into, for the second full day in a row, and it was a school day, and it was a studio day (read: cathartic movement class), and boy did we all have some shit to work through, some of it more universal, some of it from further downtown, and some of it a bit more personal.

And now, it’s five years later, September 11th, 2006, I’m watching Monday Night Football, and a stadium of fat bastards in I’m not sure which city is waving a sea of probably plastic American flags, a good third of which will probably end up on the concrete floor. Some woman singing along has an indian logo painted on her face, so what city does that make it? I have no idea. I couldn’t give a shit less. Nice singing by the all-military, though. Now, people are chanting "U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Oh, okay. The Minnesota Vikings at the Washington Redskins. Thanks, sports announcer guys whose names I don’t know.

So I don’t like September 11th.

By which I mean, I much prefer September 12th. The 11th, by default, now means ersatz solemnity, manufactured emotion, and a few million, haunted people who may or may not be glaring daggers at the rest of the country when they talk about flying American flags, and patriotism, and protecting the country, and supporting the troops. Some of us feel - ignorantly, maybe - that we know better, and that the rest of you should shut the hell up. But everything, where the 11th is concerned, is relative. Leah might say, "Shut the hell up, CN. I lived at Water Street. I had to run away from a huge ball of fire and ash when the buildings collapsed. I could see people jumping to their deaths. My mom told me not to look, because she didn’t feel like paying for therapy when I realized I was traumatized." And my aunt might say, "I don’t think it matters whether you lived in New York or D.C. or not. Those attacks struck all of us; they affected all of us. September the 11th wasn’t an attack on New York City and Washington, D.C. - it was an attack on America." The 11th means shock, prejudice, fear, closed-mindedness and numbness to reality today just as much as it did five years ago. The 12th, to me, at least, means the ultimate human experience in honesty and kindness - at the same time, which can’t be said too often. The difference is that tomorrow (or today, or yesterday, whatever, the 12th of September) people will move on and watch House (I love House) and go to therapy and go to the grocery store and not remember to call their mothers (except for me - it’s my mom’s birthday), whereas five years ago, they hugged, and they said hi to strangers, and they made sandwiches for rescue workers whose lungs were being irrevocably damaged, and they prayed, and they wandered down to Houston Street, in the middle of the smoke and asbestos, to pay some kind of weird, silent tribute to about 3,000 people who died on one day, and to thousands more who would die in the years to come.