But the bigger question is...where are the corn chips?

Quite possibly the most ridiculous thing women do in the name of beauty is wax their eyebrows.

Those of you who read this blog know I do battle with unwanted hair every day, but today, in preparation for my weekend away at WisRWA Conference, (three days with a hundred middle aged women...why am I getting hairless for this?)  I went to my local discount hair cutting place  (I will never let them touch my WANTED hair again)  and got my eyebrows waxed.  While doing this, I pondered just how silly this practice is.

The eyebrow is a fairly small patch of hair, when you really think about it.  And, after all, who really notices eyebrows?  (So long as there are TWO, that is.)  When was the last time you heard men having this conversation:

Man 1:  Wow, take a look at that bombshell over there.

Man 2:  Which one?

Man 1:  The brunette with the kickin' curves!

Man 2:  Oh yeah, she's hot.

Man 1:  Pity though, she's so gorgeous, but then there's that...issue.

Man 2:  What, what's wrong with her?

Man 1:  Look at those eyebrows.

Man 2:  Oh....yeah...that's too bad.  Heavy eyebrows...she's disfigured.

Man 1:  How can she even be out in public with eyebrows like that?

"NO MORE EYE BROW WAX
EVER!"

See?  It would NEVER happen.  Well, unless you're starring in the lead in a "Mommie Dearest" revival, and then you probably should just bag your head until those brows look human.

Not bad for a Wednesday night!

But I'm sitting there in the chair, letting a stranger put hot wax on my brows and trusting that she isn't going to make me look like Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"  (Although, given the state of my roots, I'm a pair of pigtails and a good coat of lipstick away from that look anyway.)  and I notice something:

Her hands smell like corn chips.

Seriously..is Frito Lay making soap now?

So there I am, getting hot wax painted on my eyebrows by a pair of corn chip smelling hands.  And then she rips away the unwanted hair.  Then she plucks the strays, which is my least favorite part because if I WANTED to PLUCK the hair, I would stay home and do it myself.  What I want is one brief, blinding flash of pain, and then nothing.  Plucking is endless tiny little pains, like the headaches you get when your boss tells you a joke you just don't think is funny, but you have to laugh or he'll monitor your Spider Solitaire usage on the work computer.

Today the eyebrows must have been super unruly because I thought we were done and I opened my eyes 

(NEVER OPEN YOUR EYES DURING AN EYEBROW WAX)

to see Corn Chip Hands hover over me with SCISSORS!

WHAT!!!!!!!??????????!!!!!!!!!!!

She did a bit of trimming...and I was done.  She held the mirror up to my face...I was still in a reclining position and as we all know, fat falls backward so it was, quite possibly, the ugliest reflection of myself I've seen in a while, especially since my bangs were pinned back, revealing my halo of white hair...and said, "What do you think?"

Well, I think I'm old and fat. 

Oh, the eyebrows.

Hey, they look great.  I'm good for at least another six months, which is about the time I'll have to go back again and get them ripped off because I'm sure I'll be doing something else social that will require me to have perfect eyebrows.