Memoirs of a non-asian Geisha...

I had my eyebrows waxed today, in preparation for my re-emergence into the world of sociable young people at Orientation on September 6th. My sisters, who are still in highschool, are presently vegging in front of the television and shooting me green looks of envy, as I get to start my education a week later than they do. I must say, I don't entirely understand their anger, because I am quite excited to get started in University. My mother and I made a rather delightful excursion to the Student's Union Building just a few days ago to test out the wireless connection on my shiny new laptop. There were a few moments of brief tension, as I insisted on treating my 2000$ machine as if it were made of glass, but we got it settled down and I surfed the Internet all by myself on my very own computer! Joy!
Having little else to do that day, we explored the Student's Union Building a little more closely, scouring the U's bookstore for random school supplies we had not picked up yet, including a pencilcase for me and 31$ worth of Post-It's for mother. For one short moment, we considered purchasing a very large and fluffy black teddybear wearing a University T-Shirt (believe me, teddy bears are never useless buys for me, because I actually use them -- don't ask.), but we decided it against it (I was still carrying on a solid relationship with my Folk Fest Bear, and I wasn't entirely sure whether the slogan "Once you go black, you never go back" was accurate in this situation).
Finally, my dear mother decided to indulge me by searching for the office of the club I desired to join at University - BAKA, the anime club. We found it among a shabby little warren of offices with peeling paint on the doors and ratty carpeting, identifying it mainly by the doodles of catgirls taped to the walls around it. No one was around, but we did discover that they kindly shared their limited space with the Iranian Students' Association. Good to know.
I suppose by now we should return to the subject I started out with, namely the waxing of my brows. I am cursed -- or blessed, depending on how you look at it -- with thick, wild, black brows that could give Brooke Shields or Jennifer Connelly -- heck, even Peter Gallagher of The O.C. -- a run for their money. While at first, in the early days, I was held back by both the acknowledgement of my dangerously low pain threshold (as a child I cried when my mummy washed my hair) and a fierce, unreasonable pride in my unaltered appearance, I have now had the proceedure done several times. Up until now, I only had it done to "tend the garden" as it were, to make sure that my brows did not reunite above my nose, or swallow my eyes entirely. Today, however, I wanted to do something different. I wanted them to be thinner. I didn't want to look like a young woman with humungous, if well-tamed, black caterpillars on her face.
Of course, along with the loss of all that hair, there would naturally be more pain involved. I was used to the whole thing taking only a few moments, but it took a bit longer this time for the nice lady to make sure they were even and all that. Of course, the moment she tore the strip off my face hurt very badly indeed, but it was worse when she plucked. With waxing, the pain is there for two moments, for plucking, it's a never-ending series of tiny, but nevertheless intolerable, pains.
When I finally got home, and looked in the mirror, bizarrely enough the first thought that came to my mind was that I looked like a geisha. Pale, pale face (sunlight is scary!), red, red, lips (as amusingly scatterbrained as I am, I had put some one earlier in the day and forgot about it) and moderately sized, jet-black, perfectly maintained eyebrows. My mother also thought I looked asian, but believed that was due to the fact that my eyes looked smaller because my brows were relatively swollen and puffy from the ordeal. I'm sure once the swelling dies down I'll look like a nice Irish-Scottish-Polish-Catholic girl from a wealthy neighbourhood once again.