The Grooming List: Some Thoughts

This may be TMI, but you're choosing to read this of your own free-will, therefore I will not worry. My eyebrows are like the hair atop my head: they grow quite quickly...like scary-quick. As in, I can go get my eyebrows done and then the next week I am wondering why a very long and dark caterpillar has decided to take residence on my forehead. There have been many days when I bemoan the idea of being a woman. Don't get me wrong, I celebrate the female gender: I love my girly shoes and clothes and the fact that the male species has to hold the door open for me. But then I look at men with their (sometimes) sexy facial hair, fully grown brows, and hairy forearms and legs and get mad that somehow my gender has to be the one to groom. Though I don't take a stance like Norma Rae and grow leg hair long enough to braid, I curse every time I have to make a trip to my version of a grade A torture palace: the waxing facility.

When I was eleven, my mother decided that while I had a penchant for tube socks (see a couple posts below), didn't really know what to do with my "she could either be a member of Lionel Richie's band or the ethnic Orphan Annie" hair, and baby fat along with boobs that could knock a dinosaur over, my eyebrows did not have to suffer and that I should be more girly. Therefore, she took me to a beauty parlor to give my eyebrows a "shape". During the whole car ride I was alarmed at the idea that someone was going to stencil triangles into my brows, making me even more of a "quirk-ster" than I already was. However, what happened was much worse.

My mom loves Middle-Eastern beauty parlors because they do threading. Threading, in my opinion, is what could bring even the most ornery of criminals confess to their crimes. A lady, most likely the height of a smurf, takes two pieces of what looks like floss, creates some sort of Cats Cradle shape within their hands and goes to town on your eyebrows. It can be painful at times, but mostly it just feels awfully uncomfortable. That day, I was already anxious because it was my first time and I got seated next to a woman whose moustache rivaled the late Pavarotti's. So anxious that I started to shake and accidentally kicked the smurf/woman doing my eyebrows. Needless to say she quit. I'd like to think she found a higher calling.

I am a creature of habit. I have been going to this beauty parlor since that fateful kicking day, and each time it doesn't get easier. The results are always fabulous ("Oh my GOD, I don't look like the caveman from that commercial!"), but you'd think I was about to be pushed off of a cliff. In California I haven't found a place I like-the first place I walked into, one woman was dozing in her chair if that's any indication. So I waited until I got home. This morning I looked in the mirror and knew that my sweet caterpillar had to go. Therefore, my latest list compiles the thoughts that went through my head while I was being made presumable for the public:

1) "That damn floss again. Shit, what's that? It looks like there's something on it...is that...oh God, is that food on the floss? What the...? Oh, no, it's not. Wait. Why is it moving?"

2) "If I were a war criminal, this is how you'd get me to confess. No waterboarding necessary. Just put me in this chair and threaten to wax my legs, I'll start talking within seconds."

3) "Still, it'll be nice to have shapely eyes. They are starting to run together."

4) "Oh, God, oh, God, my heart's racing. No, no, no, this is how people have strokes. Just breeeeeathe. You're doing great! You'll look infinitely better than your neighbors back in LA...people were probably starting to think you were related because of eyebrow similarities."

5) "Man, eff this. Why can't guys get waxed? Do they know how much we do to look 'pretty?' I'm going to start carrying around wax paper ready to go and just start chasing the random passerby."

6) "OH, GOD, HERE SHE COMES. Why is she smiling? Biatch."

7) "Different smurf. She just looked at my eyebrows and judged. I know it. I hope she gets in kicking reach."

8) "STOP SHAKING, KIRAN. YOU'RE TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD. GROW UP. Oh, God, I'm twenty three..."

9) "Is this what's going to happen if I become a successful actress? I'll have to get groomed every week? Maybe I can start a new wave of actresses...bring back the Neanderthal look."

10) "OW."