Pretty Price Check (04.30.10)

The Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of what we paid for beauty this week.

• $42,500: How much the highest bidder paid for a week “working” at Vogue in a charity auction to benefit the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. My favorite part is that “the experience” was originally valued at $10,000. Because that’s a typical entry level fashion magazine weekly salary. (Via The Cut.)

• $3000: What Jude Law dropped on La Mer wrinkle cream at Nordstrom this week. Because you asked.

• 4,795,357: The number of Botox injections administered in 2009. Which is down four percent from 2008. But is still 4,795,357 shots of Botox. Average cost? $405 a pop. (Via Jezebel and the New York Times.)

• $330 billion: The current value of the global beauty industry, says business historian Geoffrey G. Jones, author of Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry. (Via Harvard Business School.)

[Beauty Overheard] It’s 10 PM. Do You Know What Makeup Your Daughter is Wearing?

So here is what I’m stuck on, from this morning’s New York Times piece on tweens wearing makeup:

“I’m using the choose-your-battles kind of parenting,” Mrs. Pometta, an independent publicist from Plainfield, Ill., reasoned in a telephone interview. “I figured, better that she’s informed and has the right tools than she goes into it blindly with her friends in the bathroom and comes out looking like a clown.”

Mrs. Pometta’s daughter, Alyssa, is 11, and among the 18 percent of 8-12 set who wear mascara regularly (15 percent wear eyeliner and lipstick).

Now I get the “better she’s informed” argument when it comes to your kid and safe sex. I get it when it comes to letting your child have a sip of wine at dinner. Because  these are life experiences that have pretty dire consequences if they go badly. The worst-case scenario that Mrs. Pometta is warding off? “Looking like a clown.”

Alyssa is 11. And wearing makeup. Of course she should look like a clown! She should be playing around, figuring out what she likes and dislikes, putting on purple eye shadow at sleepover parties and expressing herself and what not.

But Mrs. Pometta isn’t talking about sleepover parties. She’s talking about Alyssa wearing makeup every day. To cover blemishes, lengthen her eyelashes, make her lips more pink. To cover up what she perceives to be her flaws.

And by taking Alyssa for that makeover, Mrs. Pometta let her know that she sees those flaws, too.

PS. While clearly, I think this article could have done a better job of digging into the body image ramifications of this trend, I was psyched to see writer Douglas Quenqua take on the environmental-health risks of kids putting all this crap on their faces. Plus, excellent quote by our friend Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face, and spokesperson for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Yay!

[Glossed Over] Don’t Call COVERGIRL’s Contest Winner “Mustache Girl.”

 

Oh Ellen. Not you too.

 

COVERGIRL has announced the winner of their “Stand Up for Beauty” Video Contest. (Remember their Campaign Declaration Cloud, that read like a spambot’s mash-up of “love your body” rhetoric mixed with “buy our products” reminders? How could you forget?)

You can go watch the video on their website real quick, and then come back and we’ll talk about Nicole, “an Ohio gal” who is “funny, ambitious, and positive” and just netted herself $50K by making faces at the camera while putting on makeup and fessing up to her lady ‘stache.

Hi! I’m Nikki. When I was a kid I used to get picked on. I was kind of awkward and hairy. They called me “Mustache Girl?” Yeah, I have a little bit of uh, hair on my upper lip. But it doesn’t matter to me what they say. I know with CoverGirl, I can feel beautiful just being me. I don’t have to be Miss Popularity. I don’t have to be serious and conform. I can be funny or quirky. I can fall down sometimes! If I want to. I don’t have to spend a fortune to feel pretty. I don’t have to wear designer clothes. I don’t have to be a Size Zero. Ha ha. I don’t have to shave my legs every day — but I don’t have to have a mustache either. Hmm. I can be glamorous and sexy and I think nerdy can be kind of cute. I don’t have to wear makeup, but I like to. Not for you, but for me. Because I. Am. Beautiful.

So on the surface, this is good stuff, right? Nikki looks and sounds cute as a button. Yay, (some types of) body hair! Yay no more Size Zeros! (Nikki looks to be about a four.) Yay being funny AND sexy all at the same time!

I mean, good Lord. If “pretty can be funny” is a message we still need to clarify — in today’s post-Tina Fey/Sarah Silverman/Jennifer Aniston/Etc world — then grasshoppers, we have more work to do than I even thought.

Because no kidding, pretty can be funny. Pretty girls get to fall down, wear glasses, make fart jokes, and even, under very specific comedic circumstances, eat pizza or cheese in public. That’s not radical. They’ve been doing it on every sitcom since “I Love Lucy.” They get to do all of this stuff because they’re so gosh darn adorable — and thus, all their wacky antics are cute, not threatening or weird.

It’s when you don’t fit the beauty mold to a perfect size 0 to 6 that we run into trouble. If Nikki lets her mustache grow in, then no, we don’t want to watch her make goofy faces anymore.

But we actually don’t need to clarify that. I’m not pointing out anything we don’t all already know, in the marrow of our beings. This is how the beauty industry works now. Plain old insecurity isn’t selling? Women are cottoning on to the “you’ll buy this product if we make you feel bad enough” marketing plan? Then let’s talk about how great and smart and strong they are — while continuing to show the same exact beauty visuals (thin, poreless, hairless) we’ve been using for years. The products are the same. The goal (look like this to be happy and beloved!) is the same. The only thing they’ve changed is the display copy. And as my friend Gayle Forman points out today, over in her blog post, “fat,” images are so much stronger than the written word.

Which is why this Stand Up For Beauty campaign (and, I fear, the whole Dove Real Beauty/Britney sans airbrushing advertising trend) is not any kind of step in the right direction.

It’s just the same old CoverGirl commercial playing dress-up.

PS. No word on what Nikki plans to do with her $50K beyond the website’s nonsensical explanation that she’ll use it to “make her possible true!” By the by, Nikki is also “Inspired by family and friends, especially her mom.” It’s like CoverGirl’s ad writers just Google “words women like to hear,” (or maybe “words Oprah has used recently:” possible! moms! inspiration!) slap them down on paper and go to lunch.

[Tip Jar] Seven, Back for a Salt Scrub.

So, remember Client Seven, the 70-year-old lady getting her first facial, despite (or perhaps because of) a host of medical problems including fake knees and high blood pressure?

Well, I must have done something right, because tonight she’s back.

Her daughter has booked them both in for salt scrubs, but failed to show up — something about Seven’s grandson and a meeting with the principal, which doesn’t sound good. “She was supposed to treat me, but I guess I’ll have to treat myself,” says Seven.

She says she’s had a salt scrub before, at a spa in Vegas. But I still make sure we go over the contraindication list pretty carefully, because I’m remembering those fake knees. “They’ll be fine, just not too much pressure,” says Seven. I leave her to get undressed, not surprised when she says she’d rather wear her own underwear than the disposable paper thong we’re supposed to offer clients. (I hate wearing those things and I’m not 70.)

When I come back in — well. I’m going to contradict all sorts of things I’ve written on this blog before, but here it is:

Seven is not pretty.

She’s the kind of overweight where her feet have ballooned up, so her toes are scrunched in sideways on themselves. Her legs have thick, angry scars from her knee surgery. And gravity has done its job most everywhere else.

I have to will myself to touch her.

And of course, intellectually, I’m furious about it. If age and weight are the two great enemies of our unattainable ideal of female beauty, then obviously, Seven has lost on both fronts. Does that mean she no longer deserves to relax, to enjoy the warmth of human touch, to feel good? Of course not. It was an unrealistic standard in the first place. Her body is just as valuable and valid as my own or anyone else’s. If anything, she deserves more respect, because her body has accomplished so much more. (Seeing as I’ve yet to bear a child, have my knees replaced, or go to Vegas.)

And yet. Maybe it’s because that’s just not the way we value women, and that value system is more deeply ingrained in me than I’d like to admit. Maybe it’s because sideways-scrunched toes freak me out. But this salt scrub (my first on a paying client) is difficult. I’ve enjoyed doing body treatments on my classmates (a fairly diverse range of sizes) because they seemed empowering, a way to celebrate a woman’s body without making it about fixing some flaw. But a salt scrub is supposed to make your skin smooth and glowing. People like to have them done before a beach vacation or a hot date. And at first, all I can think is, when is Seven planning to get into a bathing suit and why?

I get myself over it, though. I scrub up both her legs and get into my flow (though yes, I’m grateful that we don’t include feet in this service) and when it’s time to say, “Would you like your breasts included in this service?” I don’t blink when Seven says “yes.” I move in the figure eight pattern that we learned, keeping the towel in place and my eyes averted, and hoping that conveys “I respect your privacy” not “I’m afraid to look at you.” I really don’t want to give Seven reason to feel bad about herself.

When we’re finished and I’ve walked her to the shower, Seven does something that surprises me. She strips off her towel and her underwear, revealing a stained Depends pad, shoves the towel at me and hops into the shower. I dart out, closing the door as quickly as I can, and I remember how last time, she stripped off in front of me without blinking an eye. Maybe she’s just that comfortable with her body. Maybe she’s the type of person who overcompensates when they’re uncomfortable, and would rather just act like she’s okay than wait for me to guide her into the shower and have her pass the towel back, which is how we’ve been trained to do it so the client never actually has to be completely naked in front of us.

But when she’s dressed and heading out to pay, Seven makes a point to tell me that I unclasped the wrong part of her charm bracelet when I took it off for her at the beginning of the service. I apologize and ask if she wants help doing it back up.

“Why would I want you to do that?” she says in a suddenly harsh voice. “You don’t know how I like my jewelry. Just give it back right now.”

I do, feeling like the maid who’s been caught in the silver drawer. And it occurs to me that there’s another option: Maybe she’s fine being naked in front of me because she’s paying to be fine with it; she’s not supposed to have to worry about what someone in a service position thinks of her.

It’s probably a combination of all these things. When you try to work money into the youth/beauty hierarchy, the math gets tricky. Seven probably feels the power of her position as The Paying Customer and the insecurity of her body all at the same time.

She tips me $5 on a $34 service. And she’s the first client who doesn’t fold up the money first. Instead she lays the five dollar bill flat down on the counter between us and I’m the one who quickly folds it up and tucks it away.

Tip Jar Total = $48

[Fun With Press Releases] Rankled by Cankles.

Fun With Press Releases: Because sometimes, the beauty industry just goofs.

Really, I should just post this and not write one word about The Wonder that is this press release. This canvas doesn’t need any more paint. It feels sacrilegious. We should just read and silently bask in the perfection of it all.

So here (and, you’re welcome):

From: XXXXX
Sent: Wed, April 21, 2010 3:29:32 PM
Subject: Story Idea: Rankled By Cankles

Hi Virginia,

The newest body part worth stressing over is the ankles…well, “cankles” to be exact.

Cankle – a word derived from the combination of ‘calf’ and ‘ankle’ – occurs when the calf merges with an obese or swollen ankle, and is claimed to be the “thunder thigh” of the new millennium.  Many women struggle with excess leg and ankle fat and no amount of diet or exercise make a real difference. The popularity of gladiator-style sandals and cropped leggings this summer has only added to the nationwide cankle anxiety.

For those who have had enough of the emotional distress, there is a now a new treatment called XXXXX, a novel laser assisted lipolysis technology that shapes and contours the body, including the lower leg and ankle area.
XXXX uses ultrasound technology, which is has the ability to differentiate between fat cells and important tissue. The breakthrough science means more precise contouring and a gentler effect on surrounding skin tissue, which results in faster recovery time, less risk of patient complications and the appearance of tighter and smoother looking skin. Check out XXXXX for more information.

We have partnered with several top physicians in the area and would love to work with you to showcase the treatment – and we can bring the equipment and expert (and patient) to you!

If you would like any additional information or to contact a physician, please email me or call XXX.XXX.XXXX.

Best,
XXXX

Okay, I know, I know, but I just can’t help myself!

Top three reasons why I love this press release:

1. The quasi-scientific explanation of the word cankle. “It’s claimed” to be the thunder thigh of the new millennium. By, we can only presume, scholars and men of record the world over.

2. The reference to gladiator sandals that makes me want to party like it’s still 2008.

3. NATIONWIDE CANKLE ANXIETY.

Now. Back to the silent* shock and awe.

*That’s just how I appreciate fine art. You should feel free to rail away.

Pretty Price Check (04.23.10)

The Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of how much we paid for beauty this week.

• 78 percent of frequent tanners say they’ve tried to cut down but can’t — and feel guilty about it, according to a new study that bolsters the not new theory that tanning can be addictive. I think we knew this, but clearly, still disturbing. (Via Mother Jones.)

• $150,000: How much the moms on this episode of Tyra spend on beauty treatments for their kids. There’s a weird defense of spa services for kids happening right now (and let’s be clear, we’re talking about weekly manicures and regular leg waxes for grade schoolers — not playing around with your mom’s nail polish) and it’s making me all kinds of itchy. More on this soon. (Via Jezebel, who is not a fan.)

• 4 Avon Executives have been suspended pending the results of an investigation into whether they bribed officials in China and Latin America (two of the $10 billion company’s biggest markets). (Via CBS News.)

PS. Here’s a little Earth Day present for you: The Zoya Nail Polish Exchange is going on now through June 30. Send ’em your old/unwanted nail polish (which, I’m hoping, they plan to dispose of safely) and get a free bottle of their more eco-friendly polish (because it doesn’t contain formaldehyde, toluene or phthalates), free!

[Photo from Liz Barrs’ Flickr Photostream that will pretty much kill any buzz you ever get from tanning.]

I’m Your Waxer, Not Your Mother.

The New York Post is reporting on how Brazilian devotees come to view their waxers as “mothers without the baggage.” Says one loyal client:

“Meeting her made me realize how two women, complete strangers, can be nice to each other without all the catty drama. Granted, you should never be rude to anyone ripping hair off your body.”

Hmmm, responds Jezebel’s Sadie:

I wonder, as much as the genuine phenomenon of bonding with a professional you like — and of course I believe that’s real — there’s also another phenomenon, that of casting in oddly close terms a relationship which is essentially a business one, which can make recipients, alive to the nuances of class and inequality, feel uneasy.

Tonight Sue’s leg wax client asks Sue to also do her underarms, which translates to Sue pulling wax strips for nearly two solid hours, through the time when normal Americans are sitting down to family dinners, while said client reads a magazine and checks her Blackberry. (How can one check a Blackberry and read a magazine while another person is pulling hot wax off your legs and armpits? I do not know, but this lady manages it.) I think it’s safe to say that nobody feels the mother-daughter bond developing there.

Meanwhile, the rest of us give Brooke her first Brazilian. Maybe it’s because Brooke is just 19, but I think a lot of us do feel maternal, or at least sisterly, vibes. Campbell, who sings in her church’s gospel choir and also frequently in regular conversation, holds Brooke’s hand while I paint on the wax, and when I rip and it hurts — and yes it hurts a lot — she starts to make up a song that goes “Brooke has a pretty vagina now/Because she let us put hot wax on it.” We circle around and because it’s now a group of women coaching another woman through spreading her legs and experiencing major pain, all the moms in the room start sharing their childbirth war stories. Campbell is singing and everyone is laughing and talking at once, even Brooke.

It’s like how Naomi Wolf (Ooh, second Wolf call-back in the same week, guess what I’m re-reading right now?) acknowledges that as much as it creates competition and animosity between women, the beauty myth can also bring women together, enabling us to bond over shoe shopping or failed diet attempts or even our frustration with the beauty myth. We’re all here to do this thing that feels so fundamentally anti-woman (rip out Brooke’s perfectly serviceable pubic hair so she can meet a standard of beauty brought to us by the porn industry). And yet, maybe just because we all like Brooke, who, I tell you, is a brave little toaster about the whole experience, but also maybe because this is the way women have always cared for one another, it ends up feeling really pro-woman. And she’s so happy with the end result (you know, once the redness goes down) and so we’re happy for her.

But Sue’s client gives her a $3 tip for two hours of serious waxing and leaves without saying thank you. So yes, money changes the game. With Brooke, we have a level playing field; next week, she’s waxing me. With a paying client, you’re there to perform a service. The girlfriend-bonding stuff gets stripped away. And I don’t blame the women in the New York Post article for wanting to put it back. Even if “I love my waxer, honest!” sounds a little like “but I have lots of black friends!”

I just hope they remember to tip well, so their new BFFs can make rent.

Seniors

It’s official: Meg, Blanche, Stephanie and I are all Beauty U Seniors. We’ve waded our way through all 21 chapters of Milady’s Standard Fundamentals for Estheticians, and passed all four practical exams (makeup, facials, body treatments, and waxing).

We’ve clocked 300 hours (umm…or thereabouts; I admit to having lost track a few weeks ago). Which means we’re past the halfway point. And ready to be let loose on the clinic floor.

Unfortunately, the Beauty U powers that be finally got that memo about not letting non-senior students work on clients, and stopped accepting new appointments. Just in time for us to be ready for new appointments. Oops. So, our first night in the clinic is much like every other night at Beauty U thus far; I give Meg an upper leg wax. She gives me a paraffin foot dip. Blanche gives Stephanie a back facial. Miss Stacy supervises, which means we talk about her wedding plans and whether or not the day students are doing their fair share of the laundry. (Our verdict: They are not.)

So while I wait for our spa adventures to pick back up, I thought I’d pull together this list of my ten favorite Beauty Schooled posts so far. Then I had a hard time editing it down, so this is more a list of ten posts/little groupings of posts that I think are working well together. If you’re new to the project (hi Jezebel readers!) consider this your “previously on…” primer. If you’ve been a devoted follower from the beginning, enjoy this (roughly in chronological order, even!) mini-retrospective.

1. The Daytime Face. Hint: It’s not the one you wake up wearing.

2. (Extra Credit) Baby beauty pageants. Still the top reason people find this blog through search engine terms, by the way. That’s how obsessed we are with “Toddlers in Tiaras.”

3. Career Opportunities, Scott’s Beauty Business Sense, and But Have You Considered a Recession-Proof Career in Beauty? work together quite nicely on one of my big themes: How beauty schools (and for-profit trade schools in general) promise to “professionalize” the working poor, when in fact, you’re actually going to pay or borrow thousands of dollars and still struggle to clear $20-30K per year.

4. Rock Stars and Role Models, Trade Schools Scam Students, and Tax-Payers Like You & Graduation Day (No, Not Mine) are good on that issue too. (Don’t believe me? Check out the comments from salon workers on the Jezebel thread. And hello to salon workers reading this; I’d love to hear more from you. Email me on beautyschooledproject@gmail.com if you have a story to share.)

5. Selling on Up (And Making It Up as you go.) Oh Upselling. You make the world go round.

6. (Not) hooked on a peeling & More Thoughts on Chemical Peels. Tonight a five-year-old black girl comes in for cornrows and cried for two hours straight. “It hurts to be beautiful,” says Stephanie, and reminds me of these posts, because the beauty to pain ratio is an ongoing calculation around here, particularly in terms of how the beauty industry markets to women (and girls) of color.

7. Would You Like Your Breasts Included With This Service? This one just makes me happy.

8. Miss Jenny Quits & Miss Jenny Quits Part 2: The Crackdown Begins And these make me sad.

9. The Man Facial (Excuse Me, Skin Treatment). Marketing to men is hilarious. Performing spa services on men is less hilarious. And more often seems to border on sex work — I have more coming up on this topic soon, so stay tuned.

10. So What’s the Deal with Waxing? (Because my arms feel naked now.) Where we are now.

Plus, here are some handy tips for navigating the site:

• Check out About to get the back story on what the heck I’m doing here.
• Go to In Class to catch up on all the Beauty U adventures thus far.
• Click Glossed Over for my take on beauty in the media, For Extra Credit for musings on beauty issues making news, and Happenings for beauty stuff that is, well, happening. Or just go click around in the Category Cloud to your right — lots more good stuff in there.
• Go over to the right where it says subscribe to add me to your RSS feed or subscribe via email. (I never do anything with your emails, promise — we’re 100% spam free around here.)
• Follow me (@beauty_schooled) on Twitter.

And last, for readers new and old: I’d love to hear what else you’d like to see in this space. More behind the scenes at Beauty U? More on beauty in the media? More guest posts? More on something I haven’t even thought up yet? Comment or email me anytime.

PS. Also good to know: The BSP Product Policy.

[Government Watch] It’s Blog for Fair Pay Day!

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Paycheck Fairness Act (currently pending in the Senate) is a little off topic for a blog about the beauty industry, seeing as the vast majority of beauty industry workers are female. In fact, I just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out the gender wage gap for salon workers, and the best I can find is a Bureau of Labor Statistics chart that says 268,000 female “hairdressers, hair stylists and cosmetologists” earned a median income of $413 per week (just under $22,000 per year) in 2009, but that data was not recorded for their male counterparts because there are less than 50,000 male hair stylists in the country (and BLS doesn’t track data on occupation segments that small). This doesn’t surprise me because there is not one male student currently enrolled in all of Beauty U.

So, hooray, the beauty industry has no wage gap, because it has no male employees! Here’s what it does have: A disproportionate majority of male salon owners, male celebrity stylists and male brand CEOs. My favorite would be John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of Paul Mitchell, one of the biggest chains of hair products, salons and beauty schools, who has a net worth of $4 billion.

Yes. $4 billion, while the women who cut hair in his salons and teach in his schools earn $413 per week. Gender gap speaking, the beauty industry is still stuck somewhere in Mad Men Season 1, before Peggy gets promoted to copy writer.

And there’s another, more insidious and more widespread way that the beauty industry contributes to the wage gap: What Naomi Wolf calls “the professional beauty qualification” or PBQ, where all manner of jobs require women to look and dress a certain way in order to maintain their employment.

From The Beauty Myth, pages 52-53:

Urban professional women are devoting up to a third of their income to “beauty maintenance” and considering it a necessary investment. […] The few women who are finally earning as much as men are forced, through the PBQ, to pay themselves significantly less than their male counterparts take home. It has engineered do-it-yourself income discrimination.

There are so many things wrong with this picture, the Paycheck Fairness Act can’t begin to correct them all. But it will strengthen current laws against wage discrimination, ban retaliation against workers who disclose their wages, and allow women to receive the same remedies for sex-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subject to discrimination based on race and national origin. So you should tell your Senator to support it.

 

 

 

Hairy Legs are Not a Trend

Despite the fact that the New York Times found two anti-shaving celebrities last week, (Mo’Nique and Amanda Palmer, who, I am pretty sure, can only be considered “famous” because of this article) and decided to build a whole story around them, which has had much of the blogosphere in a flutter ever since.

Don’t get me wrong: I want hairy legs (hairy everything) to be a trend. Actually, I want the whole thing to be an old trend that has slogged past the tipping point of trendy and become just a fact of modern life, like iPods or iced coffee. How amazingly freeing it would be if hair removal — arguably the most deep-seated and impenetrable of all our beauty myths — became strictly optional, and being hairy was considered maybe a little hipster-ish (or insert your-favorite-youth-culture-group-here), but basically cool?

But this is not the case. (And I know my readers at women’s colleges will disagree, but bear with me ladies, because I’m talking about out in the real world.) Two hairy quasi-celebrities does not a trend make.

Remember two weeks ago when I asked what’s the deal with waxing? The comments are still rolling in and for sure, this is a shades of gray kind of issue. Some of you shave daily. Some of you obsess over legs and pits but forget about your bikini line until summer. Some of you care about your eyebrows and the heck with the rest of it.

I’m hearing the same kind of thing at Beauty U, where, as you might imagine, we’ve been mired in the subject of body hair removal for weeks now. And the biggest complaint we all have about waxing isn’t the pain (though yes, there is so much pain). It’s the logistics of the thing; the fact that you have to let your leg hair grow in to be a quarter of an inch long before waxing will work. Which means you have to walk around all stubbly for at least three weeks. There’s a lot of discussion about wardrobe planning, and how much stubble can be visible now that we’ve hit capri pant season. “I can’t take it anymore!” says Brooke, a former daily shaver after going cold turkey on the razor for two weeks. “If we don’t wax my legs tonight, I’m shaving. I feel like Sasquatch.”

We wax her. And then compare leg hair length to see who can go next.

Because, despite Mo’Nique’s no-shaving stance, despite the NYT’s raised-eyebrow coverage, the overarching theme is this: Women remove body hair. In fact, we don’t just remove it, we have specific rituals, preferences about what and how much, and schedules to which we must adhere, in order to stay on top of this business. We’re investing time and money ($1.8 billion in 2008, says Mintel Research) to get this done. We’re fitting it in around final exams, and work deadlines, and the kids’ soccer practice. And most of us aren’t giving those routines or our body hair much thought — until it starts to grow back.

“It’s good you held out,” Miss Susannah tells Brooke after we finish her leg wax. “Now it will grow back so much finer next time.” Because getting it to grow back finer over time is the whole goal of waxing, with the Holy Grail being no hair at all, obvs. Waxing (as almost everyone knows from reading instructional women’s magazine articles*) rips each hair out by the root instead of cutting it off on the skin’s surface, buying you extra weeks of hairlessness (before you have to go into hiding for the three weeks of stubble), which, in theory, would enable you to spend less time and money on hair removal.

But we’re all so busy contemplating the hassle, the injuries, and the expense involved in hair removal that I think maybe we’re missing the key question: Should we be removing all this hair in the first place?

The fact that the answer is such an obvious “duh” is the reason why Mo’Nique and Amanda Palmer are making headlines (yet not trend-setting) in the first place.

I’m with Salon’s Tracy Clark-Flory who says, “…like most of the women I know, shaving generally remains the one burdensome, nonsensical, politically indefensible beauty ritual to which I cling.”

But it’s my turn next for the leg waxing. And I can’t f***ing wait.

*Like the above spread from this month’s Cosmopolitan, which includes instructions and cut-out stencils for giving yourself an at-home Brazilian. Via Jezebel.