This post is dedicated to all the MEN.

As greater percentage of my audience is of the male species, I thought it would be nice to enlighten them with some myths versus facts about women and beauty parlours.

There are basically two types of kinds of parlours…one is
Beauty Parlour – for women only and then there is La-di-Da Salon.

The former is for women like me who just want to go to any place that very discreetly helps them get rid of the unpleasant body hair and just ‘get over with it’ in order to look human and avoid resemblance to furry animals/anil kapoor.

The latter is for women who push their shades over their colored hair with manicured hands and enter any place that has swanky looking interiors because ‘they were getting bored waiting for their swanky husbands to come home in their swanky cars’. Unlike the former low-self esteem women, these women are here to get ‘body massages’ and hair straitening/curling or ‘exotic facials’, sometimes even just to get their nails painted (Yes, I also would not have believed this last part if I had not witnessed it with my own eyes when on one occasion I visited such a place with one of my vain cousins.)

Now that I have never experienced the latter, I can only describe the former and how it completely destroys the myth that ‘a woman should visit a beauty parlour once in a while to make herself feel good’. Or maybe its just me..but so far not even ONE experience has been fulfilling or memorable for the right reasons.

It all started very early when I was 17 and my friends at school perpetually made me feel ugly about my eyebrows that were joined in the middle. ‘Just like a boy!’ they would say. Who knew later Karishma Kapoor and Kajol will make it a rage (atleast for a few years!)
Its okay to be called ‘tomboyish’ but being called a ‘boy’ was not so thrilling.

So, after being coaxed and being lied about how ‘pata hi nahin chalega’ I sat for the first time in a chair of a small dingy guest room–converted to- beauty parlour, which was cluttered with all sorts of beauty products of the fraudulent brands (laxme, Shehnaam Hussain, etc.)

Threading, my dear men, is something I hope you never have to undergo in your life. Its like….like…..(damn…I cannot even help you men with relating to the pain here as I cannot think of any painful suffering that a normal healthy male undergoes!) So, lets say, if someone kicked you in your balls, at short intervals (not that a normal healthy man goes thru this, but basically you get my point!)

Almost every time I go to get my hair uprooted from the periphery of my eyes, and lips…I tell myself ‘never ever again! So what if I have facial hair, the beauty is INSIDE!’ To add to it, when its done, I look like a baboon for a good 2-3 hours, the upper lip is red and funnily swollen. But then a couple of weeks later, the mirror mocks at me and says ‘go, look a lil more civilized’.

Waxing is Threading’s less painful cousin. But again, no so called beautifying experience is non-harrowing. Waxing is not just painful because of the hot wax and the razor-sharp knives used for its application and the final brutal uprooting of a million hair in one go, it also demands ‘flexibility’.
You being a naïve and blissfully unaware male species will ask ‘But whats flexibility got to do with it?’

Well, this is because there are minimum two women ‘working’ on you, each twisting each of your arm in the direction that is convenient to ‘them’! So, all at once, you are bearing with

• The hotness of the wax searing your skin
• The knife cum spatula digging into your flesh
• The thousand volt shock each time a strip comes off AND
• The arms twisted at unnatural angles!

So, next time if you are thinking of telling your girl (even jokingly) that her arms/legs (ahem…whatever) needs a wax…PLEASE ensure she is either is an awesome mood or just be prepared for a few sarcastic statements about your own looks.

Coming to the part which men think is sheer vanity and being frivolous ‘The facial’!! The most overrated beauty treatment. Its a 'scam' is what i think. Else, wouldnt all aunties have looked like Catherine Zeta Jones?

Trust me, what you see in movies or on television about women snoozing with face packs smeared on the faces and cucumber-covered eyes…is just a small part of it. I would not blame you men because even I thought so. It also entails the most excruciating experiences of all times, ‘the black head removal’. The first time I underwent this I thought, have the torture cells in Syria thought of this yet? It's ‘third degree’! No exaggeration here.

I HAVE to deal with hair-removal but THIS I thought was too much. So, this has been forever eliminated from my list of ‘beauty treatments’. I can deal with the teeny-weeny black spots on my nose. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, I think you are looking at me too closely! BACK OFF!!

If you are getting too tired reading all this already then please thank your stars you are not a ‘middle-class woman’.

If you have stomach for some more, let me also add, it’s not just the pain, there is frequent ‘insulting’ too. A few samples, I get to hear more than often-

• Threading – “Madam, you have LOT of hair on the face." (Thanks Einstien!)
• Waxing of the underarms – "Arrey, hair grows in so many directions, yeh toh mushkil hai!" (Forgive me, I cannot control the hair growth direction of my underarm hair!)
• Hair cut – "Madam, your hair are very scanty..isme kya hair cut karenge?"(yes, now please hang me!)

So, all ye men…if you ever wish to be born as women, wish that either you have no hair on your body or you are born very rich and can go to the ‘salons’ where atleast your dignity stays intact when you walk out!

And all ye women, who read this blog say ‘Aye!’ and support me in bringing into light the hardships of being a hairy middle-class woman.

PS- This post is not letting me add a title, which is good in a way. Suggestions are most welcome. Best suggestion from a man will win him a 'black head removal' session free.