THIS POST IS ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE GETTING A BIKINI WAX.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

One of the things that I want to do with this blog is try things that I hear other fat women say are scary to them or with which they’ve had bad experiences.  Getting a bikini wax falls into both categories.

First I did my research.  Some of the friends I asked about this said that they had pain for several DAYS afterward.  That did not sound fun.  I found  European Wax Center.  Apparently the pain is because strip waxing rips off your skin (yikes!) and this place claimed to have a special wax that adheres to hair but not skin, thus affording their clients the opportunity to keep skin that is, I assume, fairly precious to them. I decided to give it a shot.

They have an awesome deal wherein the first appointment is free for simple services or really cheap for more expensive ones.  I opted for the Brazillian (hey, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it) complete with the “butt strip”.  I set my appointment (I wish I had set it for a week earlier, but that’s a different story entirely).

I pull into the parking lot at one of their centers in Austin.  This one happens to be in the Arbor Center near Anderson Mill.  It’s a strip center so I drive around a bit until I find it.  I park my car and realize that there is a family outside – mother, father, three young boys, even a freaking dog.  Just hanging out on the railing outside the center.  I wait in my car a few minutes under the guise of finishing the song I am listening to, and then realize that I’m going to be late for my appointment and that I’m going to have to march straight through that Normal Rockwell moment if I want to have the hair ripped off my cooch today.

So off I go.  I go through the family – the kids don’t notice but the adults fall silent and I can see in the glass panes of the building that their eyes are following me.  I check in with an extremely pleasant receptionist who tells me to have a seat.  I am greatly comforted when a woman who appears to be in her seventies and weighs a bit more than I walks in and says “I’m here for my Brazilian.”  Awesome!  I am already totally in love with this woman.  She and I have the start of a lively conversation (during which she says “I can’t believe that some women at 73 just let themselves go.  Like I want my hoohaa to look like steel wool.  No thank you, you have to have standards.”). I’m about to ask if  I can adopt her as a third Grandmother when Amelia comes to get me for my appointment.

We walk down a nicely decorated hallway into a small room with a massage table. Amelia asks if it’s my first time and I say yes.  She explains the process and then tells me to go ahead and strip below the waist and lie down on the table.  Then she turns around to prepare the wax.  I stand there like an idiot for about 30 seconds, then I faze in to the fact that she is not going to leave.  So I take off my pants and panties, and standing there naked from the waist I proceed to fold my pants and hide my panties inside them.  Let’s be clear, my vulva is out there for the world to see, but I have to hide my pink striped panties for modesty’s sake.  Uh huh.  I realize that it is possible that something in my brain is just a little broken.

I lie on the table and she has me put my feet heel to heel, turning my thighs out for easier access.  She does a cleaning step, then puts powder on (which she said would help with irritation).  Then she starts applying the wax.

I give myself the same little self-talk speech I used when I got my tattoo – “this will only last for a short time, it will be totally worth it” etc. On a pain scale of 1-10 I am prepared for a 9 or 10.  In reality it is mostly only a 2-3.  Some parts were a bit more sensitive but it never really gets above a 5.

Then she looks at me very pleasantly and says in her most chipper voice “Time for the butt strip!”  She has me turn on my side and hold my cheeks open.  Again, a little awkward, not that painful.

As far as the fat chick experience goes, nobody even looked at me twice. I have heard women say that they had to pull their stomaches up in order to afford access to the top of the pubic area.  That wasn’t the case with me, but had she asked I’m sure it would have just seemed like a matter of course (very much like “ok, I’ll just need you to hold your cheeks open for me”).

All in all it was a great experience and I would recommend them.  You can find them at www.waxcenter.com.