All Smoothed Out

In my 20's, I worked with women who frequented beauty salons the way I ate ice cream - often and at different places. I never quite understood what these women, in their 20's, 30's and 40's, went on about. There was a lot of talk about eyebrow plucking, eyelash tinting, facials, waxing, bikini lines, shaving legs, manicures, and pedicures.

I've had this kind of work done three times in my life - a facial once and pedicures twice. I quite hated having someone come so close to handle my private places, and therefore, I have not been a user of salon services. My thinking was, just be your natural self and leave all that fixing up to when you get old. Otherwise, how will the older you be maintained if you are already high maintenance when you are young?

I guess it's maintenance time for me now.

In India, I had my eyebrows shaped by accident. True. I went in search of eye makeup and was directed to a beautician. I thought she wanted to apply makeup on me when she pointed me to her chair. I know, a lot got lost in translation.

So the woman cleaned my face and I kept pointed to my eyes, and she held out a thread, and the next thing I knew, she was flicking away at my eyebrow. I said, No no no. She said, A little, a little, look better. So I thought, Why not? I've never had this done before, so why not now in India? And besides, the eyebrows will grow back. The woman gave me nicely arched eyebrows that look darker than they normally do. It was fantastic.

Now It's been two months since my shaping. My eyebrows have indeed grown back to their usual patch of smear. So I booked an appointment with my sister-in-law's beautician.

Irene too found the curve to my brow and threaded, plucked, and tweezed her way to bring out their natural arch. In the end, I thought I looked pretty good. And that's when Irene said, "You may also want to consider removing facial hair next time."

"What facial hair?"

"Along your upper lip."

"My mustache?" I had wondered lately whether my mustache was visible to anyone but me.

"You could remove the hair there to look even smoother."

So I thought, Why not? First the brows, now the mustache. Why not?

She applied warm wax to my upper lip, patted a piece of paper over it, then without warning, RRRIP. Off came the mustache. And don't let anyone tell you it doesn't hurt. Not like giving birth, but it hurt. Then Irene threaded and tweezed again to clean the mustache area.

"No no," the receptionist said, "We don't call it 'mustache'. Women don't have mustaches. We call it 'upper lip' work."

"Ah. That's like code for 'get rid of my mustache.' "

"It's just salon vocabulary. Some women phone and say, 'I want my armpits done', we still know they mean their underarms."

I'll be darned. Salon talk. Who would have thunk it?