All right, who convinced me to put Nads on my forehead?
I just Nadded my eyebrows! What an experience. Somewhat akin to peeling off a BandAid, but with better cosmetic results. Actually, this is my second go with Nad’s. I can’t quite say what brings me to do this. I get the impulse to remove my facial hair about as often as I get the urge to go shopping. That is to say, maybe once every four months, with anything actually coming of the urge on the average of about once every six months. Maybe I have a low tolerance for pain. Usually I just wander around Express and PacSun (the stores of my youth- the grown-up stores take themselves more seriously than I can) until I get disgusted with myself. And usually I don’t have any particular need to rip out my eyebrows from their follicles. But boredom is a powerful motivator.
As you might have guessed because no one here can say the name without giggling, Nad’s does not come from America. It comes from a smiley woman named Sal in Australia. Originally it was sold only through infomercials, but maybe two years ago it showed up on the shelves of my local Rite-Aid. It’s bright green and comes either as a twenty dollar pot in a box, or as a small tube (with applicator wand!) designed for facial use. Why did Nad’s appeal to me when none of the other fruity-death scented Nair-type products did? Namely, the ingredients. Where products like Nair list things like castor oil (pop quiz: what other fun thing can you make with the castor bean? Ricin!) and ammonia(?) as ingredients, Nad’s is made of nothing but fructose, glucose, molasses, vinegar, lemon juice, and food coloring. MMMM. So hard not to eat it. I held my nose, pointed my dignity in the other direction, and plunked down twenty dollars for the pot.
But it’s not so much the healthy appeal that got to me, it was more an urge of indeterminate origin. My eyebrows had been looking…heavy lately. I didn’t seem to have my normal ability simply not to care. To put this in perspective, let me say that it’s unusual for me to even be looking that closely in the mirror. Inspection is a luxury - a frivolity. I just don’t need to do it most of the time. I think I let myself experience the nagging self-doubt and attention to detail that some people call femininity only occasionally. But this past week I’d been looking at them more and more. And I started wondering what other people thought about me, without knowing it was my eyebrows that shaped their impression– what impression of surliness came from my browline. I don’t know what caused this low point, but apparently the beauty industry survives on it. And likely creates it, too. The beauty industry’s not about looking beautiful- it’s about not looking ugly. There is a difference.
Who came up with this kind of ritual? She must have really pissed off the other tribespeople, who were busy doing important things like scraping rabbit hides and poison-testing berries. Who was it that first said, “I’m going to smear sticky goo on my vestigial (albeit expressive) brow-fur, smooth a little cloth over it, then rip it off in the hopes of getting a positive reaction out of people”? And who the hell at the ad agency takes herself seriously thinking, “I wonder what insecurities I can artfully exploit (or create!) today?” I know it’s a question that’s been asked before, and gone over by sociologists and anthropologists. My question is more why women on both ends of the marketing scheme don’t take a step back and look at the ridiculousness of it all more often.
I mean, come on ladies, what does it really mean that you’re putting Nads on your face?
