My Most Painful Cost Cut - Literally

As part of my cost-cutting measure, I’ve concluded I needed to eliminate manicures, pedicures and other “aesthetic” grooming from my budget. Actually, as explained below, I haven’t eliminated them completely.

I used to go to an aesthetician to get a Brazilian wax. This service used to cost me $58 (i.e., $48 plus $10 in tips). Since this is no longer deemed a necessity and does not fit comfortably within my budget, I decided to do this myself in the privacy of my own home.

I purchased a $9.99 box of Sally Hansen’s Brazilian Wax kit and here's what my adventure in home Brazilian waxing was like:

First of all, the instruction says not to microwave the wax jar for more than a minute. I don’t know if my microwave is too weak, but it took at least 5 minutes to melt the wax completely.

I was then concerned that I made the wax too hot, so I tested the wax on my wrist. The wax was so viscous and sticky that it left a trail of spider-web like strings everywhere. To eliminate the stickiness, I rubbed baby oil (included in the kit) everywhere on my hands and hard-surfaces.

I sat bare-butt on my newspaper covered bathroom floor, in front of a mirror and lamp. It looked like a b-grade, horror movie gynecological exam. According to the instructions, I was supposed to use the supplied wooden tongue depressor "to spread a layer of wax over a small area, leaving the wax thicker at the end for better grip." The instructions said to "gently lift up" the edge of the wax with one hand, keep skin taut with the other, and then yank the wax strip off.

In reality, the wax was so thick that I could only spackle it in messy clumps. Since my hands were also greased up like a horny teenage boy, I couldn’t get a good grip on the wax. As I tried to pull the wax off, my fingers kept slipping, so the hair removal process was a series of painful yanks, rather than one swift movement.

I still managed to remove the frontal area relatively quickly. However, the further south and deeper down the crevasse I ventured, I had to contort my body into unholy positions. It also didn’t help that the wax kept hardening up so I had to make a couple of bare-bottomed trips to the kitchen to re-microwave the wax jar. (Thank heavens I live alone!)

I won’t go into gory details, but in the end, I was neatly groomed with bits of wax stuck in areas where the sun don’t shine. I saved about $45 for my pain, time and trouble.

Was it worth it? I guess it was, since I’ve done this twice now!