In the days of yore, my salad days, ‘back to school’ time of the year meant excitement about new class, looking forward to meeting friends again, new bag, new shoes and general overall hyperness. The day before school reopened would be spent staring lovingly at newly covered books, labels, making sure uniform’s pressed and ready, and going to bed early to be up bright and early for school.
Cut to many years later. At 3 a.m., six hours to go for classes to begin for the term, I was on my knees, cussing under my breath, as I rummaged under the closet for a fugly tube labelled Nair Hair Remover. (The Mallus are omnipresent, that we know. But when they shifted main profession from running tea shops to making hair remover creams in the US, beats me.)
At 2.50 a.m., I had been standing in front of the mirror with a pair of tweezers, attempting to get rid of the second set of eyebrows that had appeared under my original set. Following much wincing while plucking out each strand after another, when I stepped back to examine my face, another region of my face grabbed my attention. Now this region, the one strip between the nose and the lips, is that part of the geography map that you would shade dark with your pencil and label “densely vegetated”, especially during the holidays, and especially in the parts of the US where there are no Chinatowns (and thus cheap parlours) in the vicinity.
I panicked. Normally, I would not notice that region at all, desensitized to it as I have become since I came to this country. I am an Indian, and I am not at all stereotyping, but we don’t like spending money on shit. The parlours are too expensive, and the vegetation in aforementioned region, too fine to be handled by a measly pair of tweezers. You want to call me Virumandi, go right ahead, I would think. Until I went to this sweet little college town called Happy Valley, and discovered Nair Hair Remover. It wasn’t until I found the damn tube that night, drew myself a nice cream handlebar moustache over my real moustache, and wiped my moustache off thus, that I felt ready to face the world the following morning. That I almost didn’t wake up in time for class because of this late night beautification business, is another issue. But it is true that this fugly tube that promises “thorough hair removal and beautiful skin that lasts” now dictates my levels of self-confidence. Sad but true.
But why these feelings, you may ask. Cut back to when I was 12 years old. A friend, in front of the whole gang one night, pointed to my golden moustache glistening under the streetlight, remarked that I had more of a moustache than him, the sissy, and literally rolled on the floor laughing. Eyes brimming with tears, I mumbled a few excuses and stomped back home straight to the bathroom, took Appa’s razor and shaved my moustache off. When I rejoined the gang a few minutes later, the same friend again noticed that I looked different somehow, dragged me under the streetlight, discovered my activity and died laughing again. In plain view of the whole world, and the gang, that was also giggling. And you ask why my moustache bothers me as much? I have been scarred for life, that’s why.
The eyebrows didn’t trouble me then. You could sport a bushy unibrow thick enough to hide rabbits and still feel like the queen of the world. In fact, I felt like the queen of the world because of the unibrow that was thick enough to hide rabbits. Because in tender age, when you do those things to yourself, people notice. The boys at school would heckle at the girls who suddenly reappeared after the weekend looking like otherworldly aliens in perfectly shaped thin eyebrows. I thought I was much better off with the unibrow. (And I probably was, considering how everyone who knows me from back then, from watchman to random schoolmate takes the opportunity to tell me I looked a lot better back then compared to now.) In fact, the first ever time I got ze eyebrows threaded, I didn’t even recognize what looked back at me from the mirror, some canvas with two Anna Arches on it. When I did, I was appalled. I seriously wondered if plastic surgery was performed instead, and didn’t feel up to taking on college life at all.
Not that I was spared the heckling though. The first time I got my arms waxed, the boys who sat behind me in class noticed in about 20 seconds after I came to school, nudged each other and heckled all day. This, after the pores spouted blood during the painful waxing session the previous day. I swore to myself I would never go through that again. But I never stopped. Maybe I just loved my newly super smooth skin too much. Just like I didn’t stop the threading of the eyebrows and the de-moustaching.
Why the hell didn’t I stop, I often ask myself. In India, getting all this done meant a long cycle ride to the parlour for an hour and half of sheer agony. Here, it means spending 15 minutes in front of the mirror twice a week, to pull out each strand of hair after another. The sense of satisfaction and confidence in the end has always been undeniable, but is also always accompanied by a twinge of guilt. Why do I have to go through so much pain and take so much trouble in order to feel beautiful, or to try to fit into what this world considers beautiful? Everytime I want to wear a sleeveless something or a swimsuit, why does it take an hour of preparation? Why do I need to change from shorts to pajamas when our guy friends come home, because my legs are not “clean”? Why did I pay a bomb for excess baggage for a suitcase mostly filled with boxes and boxes of wax strips and razors? Why do unshaved armpits gather so much attention? The same boys who heckled at me in school because I had waxed my arms, would probably turn away in disgust if there was a hint of hair anywhere on my arms. Whatever happened to au naturel? Is this really beauty?
Another friend, who also chi-s girls who don’t wax, argues that girls waxing is like guys wearing perfume – that essential and that normal. I disagree. Going-under-the-knife-to-look-more-beautiful is everyone’s favourite target for condemnation. Applying hot wax on the skin, and violently tearing all the hair off it on a plastic sheet is just as condemnable in my opinion, if you think about it. Even in this case, you are going against nature’s ways in order to look more beautiful, and going through pain while you are at it. (Don’t say there is no pain once you get used to it. You just get used to the damn pain and become all blasé about it, that’s all.)
I am not going to try and figure out how it all started, of the media’s promotion of ideal images and so forth. Shaving may not be painful, but this whole thingamajig of having to get rid of hair is what pisses me off. Powerful chemicals, gadgets akin to the lawn mower which wrench the hair off the skin, and laser treatment are all available for this purpose, and they all, ALL, cause some damage to the skin, or at least, are likely to. Looks like self-harm to me.
In my emo way, I just wish there was some way we could get over this madness. This isn’t being judgemental; I do all these things myself. I just wish I had the courage to not do them. Even if the whole world denounces me as unattractive, so be it. This is how nature made me.
