Then she started learning to swim. Once the obsession with buying bright red swimming suits with frills, and the fear of water was overcome, it was time to spend unnecessarily long periods of time, whispering with her friends in the changing room. Some of the older ones would talk about lotions, hair and stuff. Some proficiency at the sport, and high-cut speedos were the order of the day. With it came her elevation to the group that had all these deep discussions in the changing room. And a group pouring over the speedo catalogue, admiring the swimsuits and models......
First her father's razor disappeared. This, combined with inordinate amounts of time spent in baths brought things out into the open. She got her own simple razor. One of the hazards of using that was that there would be occasional cuts, hisses of pain, band-aids of various shapes and so on. Then came the very elementary style disposable razors using an ordinary blade, normally hurriedly found in her pencil box. Not done. After a lot of maternal outrage.
Teenage was more related to Fragrances. Depilatory creams were the order of the day, and the family wrung its hands in despair over the bathroom being locked for large periods of time, in the morning rush hour, and then someone suddenly emerging emitting excessively strong lavender /rose/or-what-have-you fragrance. Things were intolerable for whoever went to have a bath next. Creams were discussed in the pool changing rooms, information exchanged, legs and arms compared, and there came a time when an older girl joined , and mentioned waxing.
For this you went to a beauty parlour. Which meant your Mom accompanied you. Yikes . But anything for smooth legs. Some kind of masochistic ritual, where hot sweet thick solutions were smeared over your legs armpits etc , and then someone spread a cloth over it, smoothened it out, and yanked. The trauma to the skin, as all the hairs gravitated to the cloth was visible on the girl's face, as she bravely kept tears in check
Of course, all this time, there were also experiments with rubbing pumice stone on the skin, bleaching the hair, and so on. But these were not definitive solutions.
Things have changed a bit these days. For one thing, they show a lot more ads. With all sorts of ethereal ladies sitting in poses slathering creams on their limbs to remove hair. Print media too, doesn't lag behind. Today, no one feels ashamed to talk about hair removal, and its methods.
The aforementioned little girl is a young lady now, and these discussions now happen even outside the pool premises. She and her friends even go shopping on their own, for stuff they think enhances their looks. They wear so many different types of outfits.
Her swimming continues. Using the razor is a breeze, and is very safe. No cuts and bandaids. It is very quick too. The rest of the family has stopped cribbing about alarming fragrances emanating after baths, and various whiffs of strange fragrances breezing past as the young woman rushes by.
They still have discussions in the pool changing room. They are the big girls now. Maybe the new younger lot listens to their talk. And learns about stuff, like they did early on.
I wish she had opted for her hair removal by this method earlier. So many experiments behind closed doors, scratches and blemishes, that waxing trauma, and the times the house smelt like a barrel of lavender had crashed.....
I guess all's well that ends well. Till they announce Gilette Satin Care version 1.1...?
This post is a part of the Gillette Satin Care contest in association with BlogAdda.com
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