Shaving my legs isn’t a huge deal for me. When I hear people talking about what hassle it is, I wince, knowing I do something even more ridiculous in the name of looking normal for the world. Threading is the bane of my existence – and judging by the amount of women who have it done twice a month in Britain, I am not the only one.When I was twelve I got taken to a
threading parlour for the first time. If you’re lucky enough to have never heard of it
threading, it’s a process whereby a where
thread is scraped over your face to remove all the hair and reshape the eyebrows. It originated in India around 6000 years ago and spread throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe. And it fucking hurts.
Threading is also a sort of rite of passage. I remember my older cousins being taken to get it done and flinching like they were being tortured, then begging to go when they got older. When they first saw me, the ladies clucked sympathetically. “Thick hair!” they said – and it began.
I have huge eyebrows. I didn’t think anything of them when I was twelve; they were MY eyebrows, so whatever. The threading took what seemed like forever and I think I cried like I was being murdered. I had a furry face. “Beauty is pain!” was the motto of the day but when I was twelve I didn’t care about that. Never again, I vowed. I’ll stick to being hairy.Of course it only took one year of secondary school to change my mind. My eyebrows stood out. It was not considered normal for a 12 year old girl to be sporting a
moustache (no matter how dashing I thought it looked.) Eventually, I begged to go back to
threading, and after ten years of having the hair torn off my face, it seems to have learnt to not grow hair so enthusiastically. Except for the eyebrows. If I let them, they would grow as bushy and overbearing as ever before.
I still dread going and yet I can’t bear to let even my family see me with my furry face. If I’m honest, I hate even looking at myself that way, totally unthreaded; it feels unnatural. Obviously the irony isn’t lost upon me about how completely natural my ‘wild and free’ look actually is. Thousands of women like me think it’s normal and necessary to continuously remove facial hair because it’s ingrained in us that we look like hairy beasts in our natural glory.
When I was young, we had to go to places like Rusholme or Asian beauty parlours to get threading done. Now they do it in Selfridges. On the one hand, I feel chuffed that the weird thing I had done that none of my friends had heard of is now pretty mainstream – but on the other, I feel concerned for the growing number of people who now see procedures like threading as ‘normality’, rather than even ‘beauty’.
I was looking at Frida Kahlo portraits yesterday and I suddenly realised that that’s what my eyebrows would look like. But she looks beautiful! In the face of such proof, I wavered – but, of course, still ended up at the threading salon. It’s been twelve long years now and I’ve been summarily conditioned into the idea that this is my natural face. That’s the real danger; I wouldn’t recognise myself without the upkeep.
My own mother shrieked with laughter when I mentioned I might grow my eyebrows out (thanks, Mum) and I don’t have the courage to saunter outside with facial hair. I’ve learnt to put up with the excruciating pain and hassle of threading. It’s too late for the hirsute gal in me to break free.
Nevertheless, I often do that wish society would appreciate a woman’s moustache.-AC
How come you changed the photo? Not that there is anything un-awesome about Scarlett Johanson in a moustache obviously.
Hello! We changed it because it wasn’t a professional photo and I didn’t know who it was of, so without their permission didn’t think it right to use it to illustrate the article. It sort of made it look like the subject of the pic was the person who was writing. Which is why I have now changed it to Frida Khalo!
I can tell you with honesty that people appreciate JD Samson’s mustache very much. She gets propositioned by all sorts of people, and her mustache is as much a part of her as Frida’s eyebrows. Just Google her or go here:
http://www.menmakemusic.com/photos/
I’m very ignorant and hadn’t heard of JD Samson, so searched as HellboundAllee suggested. Am I right in thinking that the original picture was of her? If so, I wonder if it was taken down because if, like me, you didn’t know she was female and just saw a photo you might presume she was an extremely pretty young man?
I’m the same as you, and, googling her, I know I would have thought the same
No, the picture wasn’t of her. I didn’t know who it was hence why we changed it
I’m 22 and have never once had any threading done. I don’t ever intend on having it done – my eyebrows are so light you can barely see they’re there at the best of times! Does this make me weird?
Threading isn’t really done in Japan, so when I moved back to Europe, I was really excited to give it a go. I was visiting London and saw that at the back of John Lewis on Oxford St they have a booth. I went.
Bloody hell, the pain. I looked like someone had beaten me up once she’d finished – I couldn’t open my eyes as they were so puffy. This is the perfect opportunity to sell a small bottle of aloe vera gel to your victim for 10x the normal price. I bought it up, ran back to my hotel and bathed my face in it for the rest of the day. Never again.
I know all about torture of threading,coming from a culture that practises it and it was subjected upon me for so long I couldn’t’ break free. Now my eyebrows have grown thinner, I have finally rebelled and stopped it for my eyebrows and gone to waxing for my other facial bits and pieces. That thread hurts like fire
I really only started partaking of the thread once I started working in a barristers’ chambers and battling constantly against my very natural tendency to look scruffy, however hard I try to look smart. It’s very very wrong that society makes us feel as though we must defluff to look professional and attractive but – hey ho. I can’t change my moustache-aversion. I have tried. Perhaps this is one element of the patriarchy that I’m going to have to embrace. Frida Kahlo was beautiful though. Going against everything I’ve just said!