I'm A Woman Now

I grew up in a beauty salon watching my mom do hair. If there's one thing I learned from all that cutting, crimping, blow-drying, curling and spraying, it is that nothing is permanent. Hair grows. Colors can be modified. Eyebrows can be shaped. Other people's hack-jobs can be fixed. (My mom got called on to do any number of those fixes, always wondering why they didn't come to her in the first place).

From those formative years in a beauty shop, I figured out that if something wasn't illicit, why not give it a try? Not that I've ever been edgy in my hairstyle, make-up or clothing, but the idea of trying new things with my looks has never bothered me - I'm not one to freak out about cutting a couple of inches off my hair or shading it red or whatever. It's just hair.

So, when I went to the salon this week to get a long overdue haircut, I let the lady talk me into highlights. And while she was putting the foils in, she caught sight of my eyebrows - "What?! Have you never had your eyebrows done?" Well, of course I have. I actually like to have them waxed. I just haven't seen my mom for a few months and waxing is a little more personal than I like to get with the girl at Hair Cuttery. For whatever reason. That, and it costs a lot.

But since she was appalled at the status of my eybrows and it only cost $10 and she said she would love to show me threading ("new thing in states, old thing in my country"), my beauty shop instincts kicked in and I thought, "Why the heck not?"

Let me tell you why the heck not. For one, my eyes are sensitive to light, terribly sensitive to most make-up, and, as it turns out, quite sensitive to a cotton thread being spun against the skin right above them, twisting up the hair of my brows and pulling it out by the roots. It wasn't painful, really - just crazy aggravating, stinging, tingling somehow. My eyes started watering like crazy, then suddenly I couldn't just lay there and take it anymore - my legs started flailing and all I could think was that I must. sit. up. So I lunged up and wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.

At which point, the lady made me lay back down to do the other side, saying something about how beautiful I was going to look, to just relax, that it was just like a little massage for my eyebrows, like being in a spa, less irritating to my skin than wax, and then started chatting about girls in her country who get this done on their most important days, it's part of growing up and being a beautiful woman.

I survived. But I have now added one other reason that I'm glad I'm not a woman in her country: if that's their spa treatment or part of their wedding day...yikes.

She did give me a fabulous haircut, and the highlights I can live with (I always learn that they aren't so great on me, but then forget a couple years later and try it again). My husband doesn't believe how happy I am about my haircut because he's distracted by the tiny scabs under one (very nice, clean looking) eyebrow where a couple twists of the thread drew blood. But that's OK. Live and learn. Try anything once. And never again.