This weekend we packed it up and went to the mall. There really isn’t much to do there. Hell, there isn’t even a Gymboree.  Its like a wasted plot of land with crappy Alabama shops. If it didn’t have a Starbucks, it would be more like an indoor flea market.

So as I was walking back from the book store, I passed a little kiosk with about 12 people milling around staring at something. Anytime there is that big of a crowd, it makes me want to look too.

Could be something awesome like a dead body.

Or a hoedown.

As I approach I realize that they were surrounding two Indian women (as in from India, not American Indian) who were ‘threading’ someone’s eyebrows.

Now I understood the crowd. This was fascinating. They were taking normal thread off a spool and seamlessly removing hair. No wax, no drip, no plucking. Just thread. Even more spectacular, I couldn’t even see anyone wincing in pain as the hair is being removed.  They were doing eyebrows, upper lip, nose.

NOSE for goodness sakes!!

(note to self: Thank God I don’t have nose hair)

Curiosity got the better of me and I thought “I haven’t gotten my eyebrows done in at least…..9 months….so I am going to do this”.  It cannot be that bad.

If you don’t know what threading is, its an Indian created/perfected technique that combines two pieces of thread that pulls hair out of your face in one line. Its supposed to last several weeks longer than waxing and easier to shape your eyebrows since its done at one time, instead of in separate pieces. It also doesn’t leave you red or with ingrown hairs, etc.

Youtube it.

As I am sitting there waiting for my turn, the girl in front of me manages to lean up a little bit from her chair and MOUTH’S to me “THIS HURTS”.

Then she wipes a tear from her eye.

A TEAR.

That should have been some internal sign to RUN.  I stayed. Apparently I am a glutton for punishment. Or stubborn. Probably both.

I have birthed a child, burned myself on a curling iron, gotten a paper cut. Surely I can handle this. I laugh at the face of Pain.

HA HA HA.

And judging from the hair under the pits of this girl, maybe she has thick coarse eyebrows. Speaking of that, seriously, shave your pits. I get if you missed a day or two, but one of the great freedoms of this country is to be hairless. Take advantage.

So the girl gets up, pays, and is on her way.  I don’t get a chance to talk to her but her eyebrows look great. That’s enough convincing for me.

They gesture to the chair and I sit down and lean back. Some baby powder get soothed on my eyebrows.

So far so good.

Then she has me put one of my hands up to stretch my skin from the eyebrow line on the top and the other hand on the bottom. Basically I am pulling my own skin for her while she threads.

Then it starts.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

Every piece of hair I can feel one by one ripping out from the follicle. Every piece.

Rip. Rip. Rip.

Pain is laughing at the face of me now.

Am I paying for this? Why did no one wince, scream out for mercy? I think  they were possibly stunned into silence. And of course, here am I holding my skin in place for her to do it.

It’s like extra special pain when you are part of the torturing procedure.

Just when I thought this cannot possibly get worse, she starts threading my FOREHEAD. Do I have hair there? Why yes, yes I do. I can FEEL it being RIPPED out.

Crap, is it going to grow back BLACK now?

Chris said you can see the empty holes in my face where my hair used to be. I now know why it lasts longer…cause the hair is afraid to grow back.

The worst part of the whole thing is that they look great. Which means I can look forward to this every few months.

Fab.

I should have been a man.

~Trisha