Hairy tales

For quite some time I had been worried that I was not as beauty-parlor-savvy as a lot of urban chickas. I have never been too keen on peeling, grinding, deep-cleansing, exfoliating or using kitchen waste to better my skin, or look like a sphynx.

In my childhood my parents were content with the local barber giving me a crew cut or just balding my head during summers. That should explain why I never show off my childhood pictures! But as I grew up and more ‘chinkies’ decided that there are enough suckers around to pay exorbitant amounts for running a pair of clippers through the garden hedge, I too decided to try these beauty parlors for at least a hair cut.

Talking about hair cuts, why are beauty parlors so exorbitant compared to men’s salons? Both do the same things anyways, well almost. Why am I charged 600 bucks for a hair cut which makes me look like I just put my head through a rat hole, while Abhi gets a haircut for just twenty bucks? And his barber also throws in a free massage with it, while my beautician just rolls her eyes while I gasp at the cost of my haircut. Why? Why? Why?

Anyways, I should have just stuck to getting my occasional hair cut, but being a teenager and having exchanged my brains for a shove of peer-pressure, I decided to thread my eye-brows. For the ignorant ‘threading the eye brows’ is nothing but lassoing a bunch of eyebrow hair and pulling them out of their roots. C’mon its not as painful as it seems, it’s a hundred times worse! People should be out of their minds to be able to put themselves through this torture. But considering we are women and we live to learn pain…sigh!
Valiant as I was I endured the pain and tears, while most of my friends chickened out, seeing my neighbor howling with pain. My bravery was rewarded with well shaped eyebrows that gave me this constantly ‘interested’ look.

The torture didn’t end there. What everybody talks about after they have had their eye brows shaped is how pretty the eyebrows look, but they do forget to mention that if you don’t keep doing it often, you end up walking around with a beard which covers most of your forehead. So I kept doing it whenever I could muster enough courage or was just too numbed by life’s woes, that I needed a reminder that there are far worse pains in the world than a power cut during ‘Friends’.

Slowly I graduated to waxing, following that up with facials, bleaching and all that jazz. I was content that finally I had graduated to the position of the urban chickas. But all that hair pulling, pickling and white washing my face didn’t keep me interested for too long. So gradually I kept losing interest in torturing myself and nowadays I am just content with my Martin Scorsese looks!

Hear ye one and all, the Uber woman has arrived.