RESULTADOS DEL OBJETIVO TRES

bathroom and

forget the party.”

NM All the same. It’s just women. It has nothing to do with anything else. It’s just women and their personal preferences. Some like it narrow, some like it wide, some like the triangle real small, some like it not so small, some like it where we remove the hair on the lips just enough so that when they’re standing you can’t see the lips are naked.

KR Let’s say I was a first-time customer. What would you tell me before I ever even came in? Like how would I need to prepare and what kind of things would I need to tell you about?

NM All right. First of all, when people call, I ask what service they want, whether it’s waxing or skin care. We do skin care all over the body, and we do waxing all over the body, and we do men and women, and we do all ages and colors—none of that making any difference. Once they tell me what service they want, if it’s waxing I ask them what part of the anatomy they’re interested in, and I make it very easy for people to tell me what

they want, so they don’t seem to be embarrassed. And there are some cultures that don’t like hair on the body.

KR Like what?

NM Your Middle Eastern cultures. And they seem not to be too keen on hair for men or women. And then I’ve been asked by men—we do something that we call a “brief line” for men, because there are some men who don’t have a lot of hair on their body, but they have a lot of crotch hair that comes down low, and if they’re wearing a short, short boxer swimming-106

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“I make it very easy for people to tell me what they

want, so they don’t seem to be embarrassed.”

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suit brief or a bikini-type bathing suit, they have all this superfluous hair, and we just remove that area for them.

KR And what kind of preparation does someone need to make before they come in, or is there any?

NM If they’ve shaved, I like them to wait as long as possible. The hair could be as long as for tweezing, but if they really want to have a good removal that will last them for a while, I try to get them to wait for a month or more because hair has more than one growth pattern and—have you ever been waxed?

KR No, I haven’t.

NM Okay. Hair has more than one growth pattern, so if you came in with—

you’d been shaving for a long time and you came in with just a short growth of hair, I could remove it, but in a day or a week you’ll have more hair, and that’s another pattern of hair that hasn’t surfaced yet.

KR Yeah, I understand.

NM So that’s one issue. The other is if they’re on any of the Retin-A products or any of the acid products, they have to be off of it for about three to four days.

KR What is an acid product? I’m not familiar with that.

NM The AHAs [alpha-hydroxy acids]. Any of that kind of stuff. And if they’ve had a recent chemical peel or laser peel on their face, they can’t be waxed for quite a while.

KR On their face, right?

NM Right. Or—

KR Wherever, huh?

NM Yeah. And if they use acid products at home on their anatomical parts, they still have to quit using it. Some people use it in other places than their face for home use.

[Note: Not knowing what these products were, it didn’t even occur to me to ask why someone might use this on any area other than the face. As it turns out AHAs are used as exfoliants and can help with preventing ingrown hairs. A-ha! —KR.]

KR Do you make any recommendations for after the treatment?

NM Yes. For 48 hours after, don’t use any fragrant products: body lotion heavy in fragrance, perfumes—anything heavy in fragrance—in that area because it could burn the skin. Stay away from excessively hot water. You can take a warm bath or a warm shower, but not real, real hot for 48 hours.

KR You just burn, or what?

NM No, the skin is a little sensitive and it can work like an incubator and you can kind of get hives or something like—on some people. Also, don’t use a loofah in the area where you’ve been waxed for 48 hours. And that’s pretty much it.

So that was my first introduction to the amazing array of choices available to a woman who waxes. Several years later, with most of the research we’d conducted for this book under my belt (literally, because I’d personally tried most of it), I called Nance again for an update on the state of bush in Beverly Hills. —KR.

KR Well, it’s been five years since I first interviewed you, and back then not everyone was talking about this, but now it’s kind of mainstream, isn’t it?

I’m wondering if things have changed a lot in your salon in the last five years, like attitudes, preferences.

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NM Yeah, a couple of things. One is the design work is kind of ho-hum.

KR Meaning what?

NM I used to do all those designs. I used to do stars and . . . the only things I’ve done lately are some logos like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, that kind of stuff, and even that’s fading, and I used to color the hair. I don’t do that anymore. I mean, not that I don’t do it, but there are not as many requests for that.

KR What’s more popular nowadays?

NM All of it off. One hundred percent. And back to the little triangle, and then I try something I call three-quarters. Because some of the women, some of the women don’t like when they’re standing up for their lips to show, so we do three-quarters. That makes the man happy, but they feel they’re not quite so exposed when they’re standing up in the nude.

KR Have prices gone up much? Now that everybody’s kind of doing it, or have they gone down?

NM No, it hasn’t gone up or down. You know, some people just get a little crazy and charge a lot of money, and then some of my clients will tell me if I’m away or something, they’ll tell me they went to somebody and it was a lot less money, so they thought, “Well, Nance isn’t here, so I guess I’ll try it.” And [it’s usually] a disaster—they didn’t know what they were doing. It’s something you have to do all the time to really understand what you’re doing. It’s not anything to be taken lightly, you know.

KR You bet.

“It’s not