hair removal
by candy maier

I remember being incredibly grateful that I wasn’t part of my mother’s and sister’s once-a-month, Sunday night, hair removal ritual. Although I didn’t participate, I looked forward to sitting on the sidelines and observing female-torture night in our house. The smell of burning hair drifting up from the kitchen, always brought me clamoring downstairs to sit at the kitchen table and gloat. Holding my blonde peach-fuzzed arms next to my sister’s dark hairy forearms made me, for just once, feel that I had been dealt the better hand – at least as far as body hair was concerned.

Before the days of Nair, my mother simply turned on a gas burner so a hot ring of blue flames shot up. She had my sister quickly thrust each arm into the flames while turning them back and forth. When my sister pulled her arms back out, she’d brush off the burnt hair and her arms were as smooth and hairless as a baby’s. My mother demonstrated over and over that the procedure was painless by putting her own arms through the flames, showing that as long as it was done quickly and you kept the arms moving, the flames would singe the hair off without burning the skin. Despite the numerous demonstrations by my mother, this still took an awe-inspiring amount of faith and trust on my sister’s part. My mother also liked to show her children, and the neighbor’s children too, that passing your finger through the flame of a candle didn’t hurt at all. No matter how many times I saw this daring act performed, I refused to believe that I would not get burned. My sister, however, when faced with the choice of possible 3rd degree burns or being teased about her gorilla-like forearms, chose the former.

Next, my mother pulled a small brown crockery pot out of the bathroom cabinet. The miniature casserole was filled with wax which she heldover the same flames and waited for the mud colored wax to heat up. When it was good and hot she used a small stick to paint a mustache on her face and one on my sister’s also. This was not too painful unless the hot wax touched the lips. One time, when this happened, my sister’s scream was so loud, our nosy neighbor called to see what was going on in our house. From then on, before ripping the hardened wax from my sister’s upper lip, my mother closed the kitchen windows. I don’t know how my sister explained the big blister on her lip the following day in school.

To this day, I remember the warm, comforting smell of the kitchen on hair-removal night. Mom, my sister and I sharing a ritual – along with laughs and conversation. But mostly I remember the smug feeling of satisfaction that came over me. I may have been a bit overweight and not half as pretty as my older sister, but at least I had been blessed with hairless arms.

 

Candy spends most of her free time sitting on a mountain top obsessing about chocolate, her mother, her weight, her children, cancer, and her dog’s weight.