[My Favorite Park Slope...] Place to Get A Bikini Wax

Image via merchantcircle.comBikini waxes, particularly in a climate where one is hardly in a bikini, prove to be a conundrum. Why do women lay down the dollars for someone to severely remove the hair that came with their lady parts? In a society as progressive as New York City, you might imagine this seemingly primitive practices to be a thing of the past. Yet, even a liberal nabe like Park Slope offers not one, but a wide range of salons for costly hair removal. And here's my favorite one. 

Element Beauty Lounge, at 73 5th ave (in between St. Marks and Prospect Pl.), gets down (and I mean down there down) to business. You make an appointment (check). You walk in and announce your name (check check). A woman leads you down to the basement. There are no windows down here, nor do we want there to be. You are left with paper underwear and a freshly prepared surfaced on which to lay (it might remind you of a doctor's office, but that's only because of the cleanliness). Once you lay on your back, with one leg lifted in the air, you will realize that you are not staring up at a boring ceiling, but at a flatscreen television mounted on the ceiling. Music videos loop in order to distract you from the fierce pain of having your intimate hair ripped out of your skin. But these pains pale in comparison to the entertaining nature of JT's new video. Suit and Tie, Suit and Tie. I'm gunna wear my (ripppp) suit and tie.   

After you've been stripped, tweezed and rubbed down with lotion, you waddle up the stairs and towards the reception desk. Don't mind the gaggle of employees giggling--they are not talking about you. Right? You pass them with dignity and pay for the new landscape you've acquired. While you wait for you receipt, you text your friends about heading to Union Hall that night. Or maybe you need a day. Either way, you suddenly feel like you've been given a fresh platform of equipment with which to work. The song "So Fresh and So Clean," plays as you exit the salon and you think to yourself you've never really understood the song's meaning until now.