Totally unglamorous yet aesthetically urgent, facial depilation can be hair-raising in more ways than one. Although most women would prefer to avoid the subject, facial hair removal tops the list of most common and least enjoyable beauty treatments.
Shaving requires vigilance beyond most women's inclinations, while plucking can cause nicks and scars, and waxing's side effects may include burns, rashes or blemishes. The new laser removal methods are extremely costly and electrolysis is an expensive pain in the pores.
So what's the alternative?
Threading, an age-old Indian hair removal technique that is relatively new to the West. In a gracefully bizarre ritual, the cosmetician holds one end of a 100% cotton thread in her mouth while manipulating the other, tightly looped end around facial hairs, yanking them out of the follicle with a rapid twisting motion. As she works the thread across the client's face, the cosmetician's neck and head bob back and forward in sinuous movements mirroring those in traditional Indian dance.
"Threading definitely looks and feels weird, but it never irritates my skin like waxing does," says Monica Santos, 28, a devotee of Ziba Beauty Center in Artesia's Little India neighborhood. For two years, Santos has been driving here from Irvine to have her eyebrows threaded "because it doesn't hurt as much as waxing." Although her sister, Cindy, 19, disagrees about the pain factor--"Threading hurts like hell"-- she willingly submits and pays $6 for the treatment because she wants "to look like I have two eyebrows instead of one. A lot of Hispanic women have the same problem."
Judging by Ziba's clientele, the Frida Kahlo uni-brow and / or mustache is far more culturally widespread. On a recent weekday morning, Indian, Middle Eastern, African American and white women of European descent crammed the salon, amiably chatting as they waited an average of 20 minutes to undergo facial depilation. According to regulars such as Shelia Taylor, 27, a statuesque client from Lakewood, weekday mornings are the best bet--"'If you come here on a Saturday, you might have to wait up to an hour."
Because eyebrow and upper lip threading requires just five to 10 minutes, Ziba provides these services on a walk-in basis. (Eyebrows cost $6; the upper lip, $4). Appointments must be made for full facial threading--denuding of chin, forehead, eyebrows, upper lip, sideburns and cheeks. This costs $25 and takes 15 to 20 minutes.
