Yahoo Lifestyle Comedian Mandy Nolan... On Brazilian Waxing
The Brazilian wax has become the root perm of our generation. Painful, unnecessary, and—at times—downright unattractive, the Braz has rendered poor, humble Mr Curly … Pubic Enemy Number One. I couldn’t wait for my first pubic hair: it heralded the beginning of my passage from girl to woman. Not so anymore. According to my teenage daughters, “Pubes are disgusting!” I walked in on my 15-year-old the other day to discover she’s completely shaved. I was like, “Are you preparing for surgery or making porn on the weekends?” She was immediately defensive. “God, Mum, no one has pubes anymore!” Really? Well, I do.
While politically opposed to the rather paedophilic notion of making one’s genitals childlike by deforesting them, I’m not a fan of cultivating a pubic region so lustrous it could be used to felt hats. I’ve always gone in for a short back and sides. I prefer neat over nude. In one of those postcoital conversations, my husband intimated that it might be fun for me to try a full wax. I thought, Yes. It would. It would be fun. If I gave you one. With my teeth.
So, on a whim, I booked a Brazilian. I’ve given birth four times, so I’m au fait with publicly degrading displays of nudity. Still, nothing quite prepared me for the horror of lying with my legs over my head in a fluorescent-lit beautician’s cubicle at 9 am chatting to some TAFE graduate called Cheryl with nothing but a paper G-string for my modesty.
“Well, we’re renovating—ouch!—that’s okay, I didn’t need that labia. Put it by my handbag with the other one!” Halfway through, I couldn’t stand it. Like in childbirth, the pain was making me aggressive. I was like, “Do that again, Cheryl, and I’ll be forced to punch you!” So I made her stop. Halfway. One-half of my vagina had been waxed; the other remained in its full glory. It looked like one of those emo kids you see at the train station with one startled eye staring out from behind a giant fringe. I felt like such a failure. I just don’t do sexy.
I remembered what my therapist had said recently: “Mandy, you need to learn how to reframe.” She wasn’t talking about the poor presentation of the pictures on my walls; she meant that I needed to find the positive in difficult situations. Here was the perfect opportunity to practise my reframing. It occurred to me that selling the half-wax to my husband wasn’t so hard after all. Men love anything that’s a bit kinky. I’d say to him, “Darling, you know how you’ve always fantasised about a threesome? Well, tonight’s your night. Meet city girl … and country girl!”
So, I’m practising my genital version of The Three Faces of Eve in the mirror when I notice a strange spot on ‘city girl’. I’d never had such a high wax before, so this was freshly exposed skin. On closer inspection, I found what could only be described as a dysplastic-shaped mole high on my pubic bone. OMG! I went for a Brazilian, and I’ve uncovered a melanoma!
Great, cancer of the twat! I’ve been a comedian for 25 years. I can hear my grandmother tut-tutting, “Well, you brought it on yourself. All that crude humour!” My The Secret-reading new-age friends would chorus in agreement. “All those vagina jokes—you called it in!”
(Incidentally, I hate that book, The Secret. It’s based on the belief that you can create your life with your thoughts. That’s convenient if you’re living in a 16-million-dollar beachfront property, but if you’re living in a hole in Ethiopia without a goat to your name, your miserable poverty becomes your own problem. What happens to our responsibility as human beings to relieve the suffering of others? “Sorry Third World person, better change your thinking!” I reversed into a woman in a BMW the other day. I approached her car to hand over my contact details, and as her window whirred down, I noticed a copy of The Secret on her dashboard. I couldn’t help it: “Excuse me, I was wondering what you just did to make that happen!” It cost me $2,000, but, God, I felt smug. I had a third-party party!)
Back to the mole. I’m a catastrophist. I was already online choosing wigs for after the chemo. I was convinced I had a terminal illness.
So I front up at the doctor’s unannounced and beg for an appointment. They manage to squeeze me in with a new doctor. “Mandy Nolan!” chimes the secretary. I am beckoned into the office of the best-looking man I have ever seen. I’m not kidding. This doctor is at least a decade younger than I am and so handsome I’m salivating. I’m thinking, “Yes!” Then I remember the half-wax and the daggy beige undies I’ve got hidden under my skirt.
I’m in his office only a few moments before he asks me to remove my underwear. I never know what to do with my undies in this situation, it’s not like there’s a hook handy. Where do you put them? What’s the protocol? I think about leaving them on his desk. Or draped over his computer. Instead, I clutch them nervously in my fist.
He instructs me to lift my skirt. It’s not quite midday, and I’m standing naked from the waist down with the hottest man I’ve ever seen kneeling at my groin, investigating my half-wax. I can feel his hot breath on my inner thigh as he examines the suspicious spot. I’m so embarrassed I’m trembling. He’s down there for three or more minutes. It feels like an eternity. I’m having inappropriate thoughts. Wouldn’t it be funny, I think, if I pulled a role reversal, and my hand went behind his head … Oh my God, did I just do that!? Did I just touch his hair? Oh God, give me an ugly doctor any day. This is just plain wrong. Now I actually want to die.He finally comes up. I’m almost crying with shame. He cracks a perfect white-toothed smile and shakes his head in disbelief. “Mandy—it’s
just texta!”
More: Comedian Mandy Nolan... On a Good Glass of Wine
Mandy Nolan is a comedian, writer, artist and author of What I Would Do If I Were You ($29.99; Finch Publishing).
