New vulva spa treatment

I went for a beauty treatment the other day. The aesthetician used an array of products by Yon-Ka and Sonya Dakar - exfoliants and cleansers and masks - and all the regular tools: tweezers, lancets, cotton pads. There was just one thing that was different: It was not my face getting the facial, it was my vulva.

Many years ago, back when my marriage was new, before we had two babies, there were days when I would dance off to get a bikini wax as if it was no big deal. I could blame something vague and anthropological like the influence of pornography on American culture. I could blame Eve Ensler and all those monologues. (Coochi Snorcher, anyone?) But I personally place all the blame on my friend Candace Bushnell, the author of Sex and the City. Because of her, the bikini wax somehow stealthily warped itself into one of the required grooming routines of the urban female.

You all know I'm not talking a little trim around the edges here. I'm talking one of the thorough Brazilian jobs, during which a tiny nut-brown woman would push my ankles up past my ears and pause in her Portuguese recitation of the Lord's Prayer just long enough to grit her teeth and whisper, "Now, breathe," before - with a loud huzzah! - she pulled a six-inch strip of wax off of body parts that had not seen daylight since my last diaper change in 1970. Read more >>