Snow Sunday: When Skier Girls Get A Bikini Wax

28 Feb Snow Sunday: When Skier Girls Get A Bikini Wax

When you live in a ski town, the amount of time your inner thighs spend bare and exposed to sun is almost zero. ALMOST zero. Occasionally you spend an off-season or a week on a surf trip to the beach, meaning you’re going to be wearing a bikini or a bathing suit. Meaning you’re probably going to have to go to the aesthetician and get a bikini wax, at least if you’re equipped like me.

Some women don’t need to perform this rite of passage. Some people suffer through the razor burn and the stubble. Some women are just devoid of pubic hair; they’ve been blessed with fairy tufts of blonde wisps. I hate those women especially. That’s part of the reason I suffer through the waxing—if the hirsute among us can make ourselves attractive to the male species, perhaps we can out-breed them, and remove them from the gene pool.

So the waxing is essential, and with a surf trip to Sayulita on the horizon, I force myself to make the appointment. I make my semi-annual visit to this parlor of beauty, this foreign place where women come regularly for things like facials, manicures, pedicures, and an array of wonderfully indulgent things that are called “treatments.” I dream of someday being a regular here, but for now I’m a writer in a ski town, so I pamper my own nails and wash my own face. But the waxing…the waxing I leave to the professionals. Because when I lived in Hawaii for a year, I thought it was a good idea to get a wax kit and do this at home.

It is not a good idea to get a wax kit and do this at home.

I arrive nervous. Waxing isn’t the worst thing in the world, right? Well, it’s one of the worst things. My aesthetician is professional, smiling, despite what she’s about to do. She hands me the disposable thong panties, and I wonder why I’m even wearing them when she curtains them up the middle to get started. For modesty? There is no modesty involved here. I’m on the table with my legs spread before a person who is not my husband, sexual partner, or gynecologist. And my legs are wobbling. She slathers the wax on, pats it down, then…

RRRRRIIIIIIIIPPPP.

“Ow,” I mutter weakly. “Sorry. It’s been a while.”

She nods reassuringly. “It hurts, I know.” Then she deftly changes the subject, the weather, my trip, back to the weather and how little snow we’re getting this season. She’s trying to divert my attention, but all I can think about is the too-hot wax she just slapped on my lady parts and what comes next.

For anyone who has never been waxed in a tender zone of the body, it’s hard to make a comparison to describe how it feels. Maybe a little like the kid that tries to lick something metal and frozen during the winter, and has to peel the top of his tongue off to extricate himself? I’ve never done that myself, but I saw it in a movie once, and that looked pretty close.

Now comes the hard part. “Okay, lift your legs in the air,” she instructs. Shouldn’t you be paying me for something like this? I think bitterly. I mean, I don’t even care if I have hair that close to my a…AAAOWW. Holy fifty shades of gray area.

And then it’s over. I look at my aesthetician, Jolynne, with the tenderness you can only feel for an aesthetician, a different sort of intimacy than that between you and a mate, or between you and an actual torturer. Thank you. My husband thanks you. The people who will join me at the beach would probably thank you, too, because no one likes to see pubes accidentally. And this is your job—you do it on purpose. You somehow managed to do it without cringing, or laughing, and while making polite conversation. You somehow managed to make at least a small sliver of my body look like a 13-year-old again. And for that miracle, you deserve every penny you earned from my semi-annual visit and more. We have a relationship now, a bond. And I’ll be back when I’m older and wealthier, hoping you can perform the same type of miracle on a face that spends too much time skiing and playing outdoors.