beauty bites

At around 9:30 pm last night, I was deep into one of my ang pangit ko moments (complete with crouching in a corner and rocking back and forth) so I decided to take the elevator down to the ground floor and subject myself to a facial cleaning session.

When I entered the clear glass doors I was welcomed by several tiny women wearing a cross between a nurse's and chambermaid's uniform. Something that looked like shower caps covered their heads and only their eyes could be seen above the surgical masks on their faces. I was asked to lie down on a narrow bed that resembled a gurney and the treatment began.

One of the nurses/maids slathered 2 kinds of cream and a cucumber-melon scented gel on my face, gave a wunnerful facial massage, and then steamed my face to open up my pores. Ah, I thought, to be pampered like royalty. Then I heard the clink of metal instruments--and the girl proceeded to gouge and scrape my skin raw for about 20 minutes. All through the last procedure tears periodically escaped from the corners of my eyes. After those few minutes of pure pain the girl proudly showed me the fruits of her efforts--2 squares of tissue peppered with gunk she had lovingly and enthusiastically extracted from my pores.

By then my face felt all puffy and sore but I still felt that I hadn't gone through enough of the required suffering to be beautiful. I asked the girl if they did waxing of the mustache area (I had just read an article in one of the newer magazines in our bathroom about how removing facial hair can change your whole look) and she said they did. I asked them if it would take very long and they said it would not take more than 5 minutes so I asked them to go ahead and do their stuff.

I remained on the gurney and a different girl came in. She then took a spatula, dipped it in some steaming, viscous liquid, blew on it to cool it off a bit, then spread it on half of my upper lip. This isn't so bad, I thought. Then before the wax could harden completely, she stuck a piece of thick cloth on the wax, smoothed it out, and then ripped it off my skin. It felt like she had torn away half of my face. She proceeded to do this three more times--the other half of my upper lip, then twice more on the lower lip. They weren't lying. It did not take more than five minutes--but the pain lingered well after the whole thing was over. I could just imagine how excruciating this would be if done on the legs or gasp! the bikini area.

So there you go, the requisite pain and suffering. I did feel cleaner and prettier when I woke up this morning--though my face still feels like it had been through hell and back.

It just struck me now--if you were a masochist and looking for some good hurtin' all you have to do is head on to your nearest facial clinic and subject yourself to their tender loving care.