There appears to be a somewhat more relaxed approach by general society about women and body hair here in Honduras, possibly based on the fact that said removal is not considered a priority or readily achieved. Who knows? All I know is that I’m still North American enough that I prefer to have “smooth” (read hairless) legs.
It’s a sign of changing times here in La Ceiba that now there are a number of salons that offer leg waxing amongst other services but over the course of the last few years, I have had my adventures in this department.
There have been the dimly lit cubicles, the various approaches of waving the wax in the air or blowing franticly on it to for cooling before applying it to the hapless victim; the use of metal weaponry to remove stubborn hairs, and the sometimes not so gentle slapping or tapping to either secure said wax strips or to promote circulation. I have no idea why that specific technique was used! There have been the sometimes horrendous health standard deficiencies but recently I have gradually noticed an improvement in both physical surroundings and much more professional tactics.
The following is something I wrote for a group of women friends after my very first experience with leg waxing in Honduras. Again, I repeat the warning that it is not suitable for everyone because even though the language is clean it is rather graphic in nature!
But the purpose of writing this article is to actually promote and publicly appreciate the very professional services of Jully and her salon. She is a delightfully calm and efficient professional aesthetician, with an ergonomically correct work area. The table is high enough that she doesn’t have to strain her own back and is both well lit and private. Everything was very, very clean throughout the whole salon and she was well organized to boot! The wax was the correct temperature; she uses only baby oil to clean up with afterwards and finishes the procedure by using a commercial after wax cooling gel. Even the fact that she doesn’t speak English and my Spanish is still quite marginal didn’t prevent us from doing business with each other!
Jully's Salon is located near the Stadium, in Colonia El Naranjal, just east of Rainforest Gifts in the two storey building with the tall, white iron fencing. The number on the sign is her personal cell number, as the office number may not always be answered. PS I just found her proper address written on a scrap of paper - Shop Telephone is 440-0805 and the physical address is Colonia El Naranjal, at the intersection of Calle 10 & Avenida Victor Hugo, Casa #453
Suzie Got Done… February 7, 2005
“Vanity, thy name is woman!”
Ladies of the 25th Luncheon, can you guess what Suzie learned today?
Suzie was introduced to the Honduran version of leg waxing today, and when she and her legs finally recover from the trauma, maybe -just maybe- she’ll be able to laugh and call it just another adventure. For the uninitiated, and those fortunate females who are not automatic winners of the annual Ladies Luncheon hairy leg contest, you need read no further. If you choose to, Suzie will not be held responsible for your future psychoanalytic costs.
If you’re still reading, be prepared… Suzie sure as hell wasn’t! It is well known that Suzie is what polite society would refer to as “hirsute”; in real world language it means she’s as hairy as the proverbial ape, and fully admits that whoever her sperm donor was, he was out of Mr. Darwin’s evolutionary tree only long enough to fall upon her birth mother and then immediately return to said tree.
Suzie can’t resort to some of the more mundane, or humane, methods of leg hair removal. There isn’t a razor built that can be effective for more than 4 hours; she almost needed skin grafts the last time she tried one of those cream removal products, and she was rather hoping that she wouldn’t have to resort to the tweezers in order to avoid that “au naturale” sensation of her hair literally blowing in the breeze. (The hair on her legs, Ladies!)
So Suzie found a woman friend, with effective and fluent English, who was able to tell her that yes, women did wax their legs in Honduras; and yes, there was a professional salon in town and gave her directions to it. Well, with myriad and sundry wanderings into places she wasn’t supposed to be, Suzie finally found said salon. And stumbling through the language barriers, with numerous positive and negative gestures, was able to establish that she wanted her legs waxed and was willing to pay the 200 Lp charge for same.
She should have realized she was in the wrong place, for the wrong reasons, with the wrong women, when she entered the dimly lighted back workroom/storage area. No air conditioning like there was in the main room of the salon; ratty scraps of towels drying on the window bars, concrete floor complete with numerous and various sized ants, and the lonely little pot of wax on the card table. She still didn’t have the sense to back away quietly and calmly and run like hell for the street. She may have actually been in denial of reality and therefore allowed herself to be draped in a gown, removed her baggy shorts and placed herself in the prone position on a bench seat that was no more than 12” wide and definitely less than 5’ long. Please keep in mind that there was no disposable paper sheet covering the bench, and it was discovered during the ensuing debacle, that the bench seat was not attached to what was underneath it.
Grasping for any element of health standards, basic hygiene or even a semblance of the euphemistic “professional” status of the establishment, Suzie took it as a good sign when her technician began cutting fresh cotton strips. That was the one and only pretense of what Canadian women would recognize as a leg waxing….
It got worse. Suzie had learned the Spanish word for “HOT!” last year when she got her legs done in Mazatlan, and is grateful that the ensuing burn mark continues to get smaller as time goes by. There was no need for that word this time.
Cool, thick wax, applied to either large portions of the leg, or to the very long cotton strips, which were then applied, repeatedly, to Suzie’s legs. The technician, (read Attila the Hun) then proceeded to display a rather disturbing technique which consisted of standing upright and applying brute force in removing said cotton strips, (remember about the unsecured bench, Ladies?) This technique was accompanied by clear signs and sounds of distress with her either immediately clutching the same section of violated skin, or her head and/or hand after she smashed it into, or off of, the cupboard positioned less than two feet over Suzie’s prone, and now shell shocked, body.
Obviously one of the very few English words the young woman understood was bikini, and she proceeded to attempt to give Suzie a Brazilian wax. For those of you who have not watched that episode of “Sex In The City”, this consists of removing every single pubic hair, rather than simply wearing it off as Pamela once told us, when she was asked if it turned white as we aged. At this point Suzie realized she was going to have to rescue herself if she ever wanted to be able to make use of what the good Mother gave her again! No linguistic skills were necessary, what with one hand protectively clutching her groin area and the other hand flailing madly to get the wax away from down there!
Communications completed, though the clutching hand now firmly ensconced “down there”, Suzie allowed herself to be flipped over in order to finish the other half of said process. The finishing technique consisted of horrendous quantities of a highly perfumed Jergens hand lotion, the application of a tool that looked like a cross between a pair of pliers and something that should not have been used to open beer bottles; copious mutterings on Attila’s part, accompanied by the now random twitching, and borderline whimperings, of the pretty much comatose Suzie. In the interests of supposed professional standards, Suzie was then subjected to an extremely determined dry towel scrubbing to remove the largest poolings of leftover, and now hardened, wax. Thankfully, Suzie had been wise enough to bring along the legs to her shorts, originally to avoid sun burning newly waxed legs, but now critically necessary to simply cover the remains and was able to shakily exit said establishment.
Ladies, to put it bluntly, there was enough wax leftover in the nether regions, fore and aft, that if Suzie had been foolish enough to sit down, she could have, (and probably would have!), permanently sealed shut the supposed “gateway to pleasure”. As it was, she discovered that copious amounts of soap, hot water and intense scrubbing were not enough to remove it, and resorted to a second shower consisting of a dry scrub of canola oil, followed by the same amounts of soap, hot water and scrubbing. There is evidence that some hair was actually removed, though needless to say it wasn’t the longest or darkest ones on the public portions of her legs, and Suzie is now left wondering just how long it will take to get the remaining bits, chunks and streaks of wax off of her body.
Suzie has now resorted to using her 12 year old bottle of rum as an antiseptic, with applying copious amounts to her interior, while attempting not to concern herself about the potential life threatening, or at the very least, permanent exterior damage.
Hmm, vanity: ever notice that it rhymes with stupidity?
P.S. Next morning: Definitely lots of hair remaining, but no gaping wounds…Safe, but certainly not unscathed! At this point, Suzie doesn’t give a flying fart if Hondurans wind up believing that all Canadian women come complete with a year round winter pelt!
