"I thought buying a home waxing kit would be an economical and easy option for brow and lip maintenance in between visits to my wax lady. &^%$, was I wrong. The wax decided to permanently melt on to my skin and when I attached the cloth and pulled ... it pulled off half my brow — skin and all. The girls called me 'Waxy' for weeks. Lesson learned: always use a professional."
E.C., Boston
When we relay the story to Meridith Greene, an aesthetician at the Carriage House Salon (33 Church Street, Cambridge, 617.868.7800), we can practically hear her cringing over the phone. “I don’t recommend home eyebrow waxing, unless you have somebody to do it for you,” Greene says. “Even as a professional, it’s very difficult to do your own brows.” There’s the potential for hot wax to drip onto the lashes or, worse, into the eyes.
Greene suggests using a hard wax instead of a strip wax on sensitive areas like the underarms, bikini line, and face. Hard wax adheres only to the hair, while strip wax can adhere to the skin as well, grabbing a few epidermal layers along with your stubbly brows. Where our wax-happy friend probably went wrong, Greene muses, was in layering too much wax on her skin to begin with. “It takes a lot of force. If you put the wax on too thick, it takes a lot to pull it off.” And that’s when skin is more likely to be yanked off, too. Of course, if the damage is already done, keep the area clean to prevent infection, and think twice about caking it with foundation. “It’s the same sort of thing if you had a big scrape,” says Greene. “You wouldn’t want to fill it with makeup.”