Candlelit Evening with my Completely Bare Wax Kit
Growing up in Miami, I was groomed to be constantly aware of hair growth on my legs, armpits, brows, and kitty kat.
My first experience was with my tia, who told me before starting to relax, “Para ver se bella hay que ver estrellas” as part of her pep talk.
I was sweating profusely on her plastic covered chairs and gripping the sides of the armrest. I didn’t want to be there but also knew my eyebrows were looking busted after my initial attempts to pluck them myself. As she covered the corners with hot wax I saw her eyes look concerned as I had moved a bit during the process. There began the summer of looking shocked regardless of my face being relaxed or not. In other words, she ruined my brows and left them naked and lifted hence the permanent state of looking crazy.
This happened about ten years ago and since then I have not set foot in a wax salon or gone back to any of my aunties apartments for a wax. Fast forward quarantine summer 2020, I was going to a lake upstate with the man I was dating and his best friend and girlfriend. Although we'd be socially distancing, I knew I wanted to wear this towel textured bright yellow polka-dot bikini my homegirl gifted me.
The bikini bottom is an incredibly small bottom so I knew I would need to pull out my bare more ouch Less Strip-Less Hard Wax Pearls Kit. That evening I popped open a bottle of chilled red, lit some candles in my bathroom and texted my roommates that I’d be waxing— just in case I screamed, didn't want to alarm them.
The reason I love using the pearl kit is that it has coconut oil and the wax pearls shrink wrap around my hair follicles, not the skin. Aka the reason I dodged my tia after all these years of trauma was she had my skin looking like someone rubbed guava under my eyebrows for days.
She ripped things that should never have been ripped, still got love for her though.
I started by washing the area by my coochie with soap and water following up by drying really well. I made sure my hair was ¼ in in length and started heating up 10oz of the wax pearls in the jar. I let it cool down for 1 minute and take a swig of wine and stir the wax while also dancing to Kalil Uchis and Rico Nasty’s new song Aquí Yo Mando. When the consistency resembles that of honey I test out the temperature making sure it's not too thin or hot.
I take a deep exaggerated breath, do a quick sign of the cross over my body and sprinkle the powder before spreading the wax onto the strip in the same direction of my hair growth.
I let the wax harden, about 60 seconds, and let out a “ay dios” as I hold the skin tight and pull off the strip briskly. I won't say it was painless, as my tia told me before “to be beautiful you must see the stars”. With her I saw stars, meteors, galaxies, but with completely bare I saw just a few tiny stars. I followed up with their luscious smelling lavender oil post wax cleansing towelettes and called it a night.
