Hot Wax and Cold Realities

 One French man on a beautiful Sunday morning, eating khwahsaunt and drinking hot chocolate said, "One must suffer to be beautiful". Today, it is famously repeated to every woman - "Beauty is Pain". 

Every once in two months, I have an appointment with the Devil at a salon. She smiles at me, tells me to sit comfortably on the stone-cold bed, change into a black netted shroud-like looking cloth and I wait there for the bimonthly torture to begin. She heats up the wax and with loving hands, gently spreads a dollop of it on my legs. Surprisingly though, the said genteel hands forget their nature the second they come in contact with waxing strips. Never before have I witnessed the duality of woman as I do there. Because along with my dreadlocks, her superpower of ripping my soul out is a newfound one. 

But I have questions:

1. Why can I never tell my waxing lady that the wax is hot and I'd rather jump into the fire than let you rip my skin off while I lay vulnerable at your torture table?

2. Why do I need to inflict myself this disgustingly needless pain every other month as if irregular periods weren't already doing that job for me?

3. Why do I need to wax and remove all my body hair?

4. Why does the mother think body hair is the factor that would potentially affect my great looks in the negative, ultimately leading to a low turn-up of future prospective grooms? (Brides are out of the question when even grooms outside my exact denomination of Christianity are also a no-go. chill) 

5. Why are there so many different flavours to wax ??!! Who is tasting that??

6. What is so very ugly about hair and why is it desirable on men but not me? Wear pants if you go to play, cover your legs if you're at the gym, and don't take those ugly hairy legs to the store to buy 1 packet of milk. Wax them first. why?

I will never understand society. The removal of body hair is paradoxical -- the pressure to do it is recognized by many women as a stupid social norm and yet they strictly follow it. Now look at me. Every time I'm at the salon, I promise myself to never return for these services. Because these little whiskers represent the most basic rules of patriarchy - We equate body hair with power and masculinity, and many are intimidated when women showcase those traits. why do I keep going back you ask? My best guess would be that I too am a slave to this thought.

If you're unsure whether your hair growth qualifies as 'excessive' for a woman, here's a measurement tool that some men had the galls to develop for you.

In 1961, an endocrinologist named Dr David Ferriman and a graduate student published a study on the "clinical assessment of body hair growth in women". More specifically, they were interested in terminal hairs (ones that are coarser, darker and at least 0.5cm/0.2 inches in length) rather than the fine vellus hairs. The men looked at 11 body areas of women, rating the hair from zero (no hairs) to four (extensive hairs). The Ferriman-Gallwey scale was born.

So is beauty pain or is pain lifted onto a pedestal so high that it's now conditioned to believe that it would result in beauty? Will we, as women, ever be able to come out of this hamster wheel we're running? Because honey I'm tired.