Last week, I noticed that my pubic hair was beginning to poke through my underwear. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to shave. I don’t want to have razor burn on my poor vulva. But I can’t live like this.” I’m also not in a financial position to spend $70 on a Brazilian wax at a studio.
The solution was obvious: wax at home and be pube-free for a month.
So I went to the supermarket and I bought two boxes of Veet face waxing strips. My roommate was with me and she kept repeating, “Dude, just deal with the bush. Why do you hate yourself?” and I was starting to get nervous. What if it doesn’t work? What if I accidentally tear off my skin? What if I mar my vulva permanently and this turns out to be a huge narcissistic mistake?
I pushed these fears from my mind and prepared myself. I showered and exfoliated, dried off, turned on some calming music, and lit a candle. I don’t know why I lit a candle, it just felt right.
And there I stood at the mirror, naked from the waist down, staring at myself and thinking, “What the fuck are you doing?”
I opened the wax strip, applied it according to the instructions, and froze up. I just stared down at it and started breathing like I was a mother-to-be in a lamaze class. If there was ever a time in my life when the Rocky theme song should have played, this would have been it.
I got up the courage and ripped the strip back with a shaky hand, revealing a bare path in what was previously a rainforest. And I was immediately hooked.
It’s so simple and satisfying! It hurts so badly but it’s so worth it! I was on a roll, obsessed with tearing out my pubes by the roots, when I reached for the next strip and… there weren’t any left.
When I said it was a rainforest down there, I wasn’t joking. The bush was bad enough to begin with but without enough wax strips to finish the job… my vulva was now cheetah print.
Even worse, there was a clump of sticky and hardening wax stuck to the hair near my clitoris and it was more painful than the act of waxing. I couldn’t get it off and I started to panic so I filled up the bathtub with hot water and sat down, hoping that warming the wax would allow me to remove it. It didn’t work. So I thought I should just shave it off and that’s the story of how I completely destroyed my razor.
What worked? The same thing that always works: coconut oil. You have pimples, want to whiten your teeth, or don’t have any lube in the bedside cabinet? Coconut oil is the answer! It broke up the wax and my heart rate returned to normal. But then I slipped in the tub and bruised my hip on the soap shelf.
I ended up removing my cheetah spots with a razor and although my dignity went down the drain that night, I am completely happy with my decision to give myself a Brazilian. Everything is as smooth as satin and I love it. Now I know that next time I’ll need to buy more wax strips, keep the coconut oil on hand, and pop a few painkillers first.
Cover image via bollywoodshaadis.com