Aselin

I'm a rather low maintenance girl. I'm most comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt and you can often find me in the same outfit multiple days of the week. So, while I don't get my nails done (I bite them myself) and I don't go to the tanning salon (a fine layer of dust seems to have the same effect) and I don't dye my hair...yet. I do draw the line at one beauty necessity: the eyebrow wax.

While I have a fairly high pain threshold, I can't pluck my own brows. (TMI? Well, you do come here of your own volition).

So I regularly let a highly-skilled glamorous Asian woman get me presentable every few weeks. This weekend I went in for a touch up and settled in to the relaxing, comfy waxing table in the privacy of the waxing room. OK, 'room' is a generous description, it's actually a cubicle with a curtain separating it from the nail salon, but at my price point this is as glamorous as it's going to get.

Lounging back, I close my eyes and ready myself for the spa experience. My technician enters, and gives me the once-over asking in a rather nasal tone, "What you want done?"

"Eyebrows" I reply and fold my arms ready for the warm dollup of wax I find so pleasant.

Instead of starting the treatment I'm startled by, "You no want your lip done?"

Ok, now I'm taken aback. I have never noticed that I had a 'stache. Oh my goodness, I've turned into one of those women who has lots of facial hair and doesn't notice. Those women you love having conversations with, but try desperately to find an inconspicuous place to look as they have mole hair, or chin hair or, as in my case, a handlebar mustache.

At this point I don't know what to do, and am in a full panic. I was not prepared for the lip waxing. I'm so flummoxed I ask the stupid question, "Do I need a lip wax?"

Again, the nasal reply: "Oh, yeah but you can do what you want. "

Girls. We have got to stick together. I don't know what I want. I do know that I do not want a mustache, but I need some sisterly advice. Suddenly the sanctity of the salon has shifted, and I feel like at the auto repair shop where I always feel like the mechanic is trying to take advantage of me because I know nothing about cars. Do I get the extended warranty on the flux capacitor? Do I have my windshield wipers rotated? Do I get my lip waxed? I DON'T KNOW!!! I just want someone I trust to tell me what to do and not have my husband ask me later what the heck I was thinking.

I figure I can always come back and have more hair removed from unseemly locations so I decline the lip wax. The responding huffy sigh shows I clearly have made the wrong decision, and I spend the entire time of the brow wax obsessing over how bushy my mustache looks.

Shielding my wolf-like face from the pedicure patrons I pay and run out to the car. I pull out of sight of the salon and check my mirror. Leaning closer and closer to the rear view mirror, I can't see a mustache. There are all sorts of other hideous things I need to speak to an esthetician about, but for the life of me I can not see lip hair that warranted that huffy sigh.

Still this is not a decision one makes lightly. I scurry home and barge in the house accosting my children with, "Do I have a mustache? Look really closely, now stand back, now squint a little, turn sideways while I walk by pretending I'm on the phone. Does the reflection of the phone make me look like I have a mustache?"

Of course, I put money in each of their therapy jars.