When I was 19, I read in an issue of Vogue how A-list celebrities were getting their unruly eyebrows waxed into sleek, sexy shapes. Well, as a desperate fashionista wannabe, I was elated to hear there was something out there that could tame my uni-brow.
I grabbed the phone and called a similarly bushy-browed friend and we made our very first appointment at Lord & Taylor's for an eyebrow wax. We went during our lunch breaks from work. I can't even tell you how glamorous I felt just walking into the salon saying, "I'm here to get my brows waxed." Pure joy.
That is until the esthetician smoothed that warm goo above my eyes and Riiiiiiiiiiiipped! the skin, I mean the hair off my face. Oh, crap! Who thought of this as a beauty treatment? It seemed more like a torture device one army would use against another.
With swollen, throbbing faces, my friend and I returned to work. Everyone wanted to see our new sexy brows. Despite the redness, we were told we looked great. "More polished," one coworker said.
Ignoring the pain, I went for a brow waxing faithfully every month - especially when I landed a job in the fashion industry. There was no way I was showing up at events with a weasel on my face.
But I never built up the nerve to wax my legs or the nether regions. I just couldn't imagine patches of hair being snatched off "down there". I used Nair for years despite my assurance that I'd someday grow a second head because of it.
Well, here I am many years later (and thankfully no second head) still wishing I could stop the Nair but lose the hair.
Shobha to the rescue!
While on Twitter last week, a lovely girl from New York's poshy Shobha salon offered to send me a sample of her company's golden child - an all natural hair removal kit made from sugar. She claimed it removes hair with no nasty chemicals and less pain than waxing.
Okay, what the heck? I'd give it a try.
A few days later, it arrived via FedEx. I'd done some research on "sugaring" - a hair removal technique dating back to ancient Egypt - and found several recipes online for creating my own sugar hair remover. Let me just say it would have been labor intensive. I'm sure after one attempt, I would have run back to my Nair.
But Shobha has put everything for sugaring right in one cute orange and white box. As you can see from the picture above, I received an 8 oz jar of sugaring gel (an all natural blend of sugar, water, glycerin and citric acid), 2 oz of talc free powder, 6 denim strips, 2 plastic spatulas and an instruction booklet.
Okay. Here goes. I ran upstairs and stripped down. I thought I'd try my upper thigh first. After tossing a small bit of powder on my leg, I warmed the yummy looking sugaring gel in the microwave for a few seconds. Then I grabbed the largest spatula and smoothed the gel on my thigh.
Um, check the temperature after pulling it out of the microwave. That's all I'll say about that. Once I got the gel smoothed on, I pulled out one of the heavy denim strips and applied it to my leg over the gel. I rubbed over the denim several times and yanked the strip in the opposite direction of my hair growth.
Wow! Much less painful than I'd expected. And even better, I had a small completely smooth, hairless square on my thigh. I did half of my leg that first night and the rest the next day.
I will say it takes time to do it well, but for an at-home kit, this stuff rocks. For someone like me who gets all giddy over natural beauty stuff, this is a dream come true.
The brand director, Jennifer, is so excited over their food grade, completely natural ingredients, she dared me to taste it! She did point out that this only applied to the sugaring gel, not the powder or the denim strips. Thanks for clearing that up. And as I love dares, I then had to slide a little bit of the gel across my tongue.
It taste like honey with a drop of lemon juice in it. Quite tasty. So if I'm ever stuck on a desert island, I hope I have my Shobha kit with me. I'd be able to remove unsightly hair and prevent starvation. Beauty doing double duty. I love it.
