T A B L E++T A L K

How do you raise your kids to become independent? Join the "cutting the cord" discussion in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Second Thoughts
By Sallie Tisdale
We are all criminals
(06/11/98)

Drama Queen Candidates
Mommy dearest -- not!
(06/10/98)

How to ruin your kids' summer vacation
By Kate Moses
Instead of schlepping your kids off to camp, let them do nothing
(06/09/98)

Someone to watch over me
By Janis Cooke Newman
Babyhood in a Russian orphanage
(06/08/98)

Living under the knife
By Fiona Morgan
Steven Levenkron's book "Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation" casts an eye on the emotional pains behind a dark adolescent practice
(06/05/98)

BROWSE THE TIME FOR ONE THING ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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[ T I M E_ F O R _O N E _T H I N G ]

BY JOAN WALSH | Feminism saved me from caring about my bikini line. I didn't shave my legs more than annually throughout my teens and 20s, and shaving along my crotch felt dangerous and barbaric. The few times I did it, the results didn't impress me. The hair began to grow back within hours, itching like hell, and Don Johnson stubble on my inner thighs wasn't my idea of attractive. Depilatories didn't work. Plus, creating the illusion of a hairless pubis seemed like one more example of how we glorify the sexless child's body over what's womanly, a step in the direction of kiddie porn.

After I abandoned a smidgen of feminism to vanity in my 30s, I began to shave my legs and underarms and even wax an arch into my unruly black-Irish eyebrows. But I still refused to take a razor to my bikini line. Living in fog-bound San Francisco, it didn't matter much, since I don't spend a lot of time at the beach.

But last summer I vacationed with some high-school girlfriends, and while we were lying by a lake in Wisconsin drinking beer, they glimpsed the thicket of brown hair peaking out from my swimsuit, and they were appalled. "That's gross," they told me. Suddenly it seemed gross to me, too. I had to admit, I liked the look of their creamy inner thighs.

"But I can't shave there!" I protested. They didn't shave there either, of course; they waxed. I flinched at the thought. "It doesn't hurt much more than waxing your eyebrows," Jodie said, and she knew I did that monthly. And there were other benefits, too. Men found it incredibly sexy, Thalia confided: It drove her husband of more than a decade absolutely nuts.

I was intrigued. Back in San Francisco, I noticed women asking for a bikini wax at the salon where I had my eyebrows done, and I began to ask how much it hurt. The answers varied a lot, from "As much as labor!" to "Less than your eyebrows." I had barely gotten through labor -- that's why I only have one child -- and can hardly stand getting my eyebrows waxed. I wasn't sure I'd survive a bikini wax.

Finally, on a whim, the night before a weekend getaway with my boyfriend, I asked Triss, the Vietnamese salon owner who does my eyebrows, to wax my bikini line. She grinned broadly, and hustled me into her back room before I could change my mind. Triss giggled with anticipation as I took off my pants. She did my eyebrows first and this time they hurt like crazy. "Do you have your period?" she asked when I complained. It was just ending. "Oh, well, everything hurts more then. Not the best time for waxing." Great. I thought about fleeing but my pants were already off.

N E X T+P A G E: It hurt like ...