Sometimes, A Woman's Gotta Do What A Woman's Gotta Do

I am going to visit my friend in the DR (Dominican Republic, for those of you who don’t live amongst Dominicans in NYC) for Xmas and my 30th (!) birthday. I asked her if I can wear jeans all the time, or if it will be too hot. She said I may wear jeans if I want but that I should also bring my bathing suit. I asked her if that meant I should shave. “Of course you should!!!!” she replied.

This posed a huge dilemma for me. I haven’t shaved my pits since Thanksgiving and my legs since I was in Israel in August, so shaving would be a time consuming task, as you can imagine. Plus I really don’t want to have to shave while I am there. That leaves me with the two-step process. First, I have to hack off the fur on my legs and in my pits with a regular razor. By regular razor, I am referring to men’s razors, which are generally much better than women’s razors. Women’s razors may have longer or wider handles, and come in pretty colors, which is totally why they cost much more than men’s razors, but the blades themselves are far worse. Men get sharper blades with better safety features so that they don’t hack their faces to pieces. Women’s razors tend to shave off large swaths of skin along with the hairs, although sadly I have noticed that despite the fact that I shaved off a big chunk of skin on accident, hair sometimes remains behind in the bloody pulp of my leg. I so hate shaving. Plus it has been fucking frigid in NYC lately, so I really need the fur for extra warmth. I swear it makes a difference.

Anyway, I began Phase I of Operation Smooth Legs and Pits on Tuesday night. Since I hadn’t shaved for so long, it took me about an hour to remove the appropriate amount of leg hair. I even had to shave my freaking inner thigh (the horror! the horror!) in case we went swimming. I feel naked. Pits were a bit faster, but still annoying.

Phase I needed to occur early enough so that little hairs could start sprouting again before I went on my trip. Thanks to my Eastern European Jewish heritage, this does not take more than a day or two. On Thursday night, Phase II will begin, which is when I use my special electric razor/torture device that will yank the little guys out by the root. Fortunately, these machines have improved greatly since Mossad invented the EpiLady and pretended it was actually created by three average Israeli women. I think mine is a Remington. If this is done well, I will be carefree during my trip and I will not embarrass my friend. It certainly involves a lot of planning and effort, though. Fortunately, I do not bother with this often.