by Mamrie Hart
As you can see here we have a Caucasian vageen. This one is particularly hairy, as it has been in the wild since 1983. Do not get too close. Unlike a skunk, it may not spray you, but it can project a foul odor. Next, we have the national vagina of our country, the great bald spread-eagle. . . .
As mortified as I felt with an audience looking down my hatch, the most painful thing of this experience was the actual pain of this experience. I guess I had expected that these women had had a little more training. You know the dummy heads that students practice cutting hair on in beauty school? I expected the same for waxing school—dummy vagina molds where these gals could get in their hours. But according to the amount of failed rips that I felt, I was gravely mistaken.
One woman just didn’t have the strength to rip it off. She poured on the hot wax and anxiously applied the paper. I swear I saw her mouthing a prayer, and then I watched her close her eyes as she pulled with all her might. It didn’t budge. The only thing that hurts more than someone ripping deep-rooted hairs out of your crotch is someone trying and then failing to rip deep-rooted hairs out of your crotch. In fact, I think she pulled so hard that my hairs grew out an inch, like one of those dolls in the ’80s that you could cut its hair then lift its arm to make it grow back out.
She tried again—still nothing. She and my vagina were having a high school courtyard catfight: two girls start pulling each other’s hair and neither refusing to let go. I watched the instructor tap her out. A new one, clearly the teacher’s pet, stepped in for clean-up duty.
This woman approached me with a smile on her face, totally at ease and super confident—a little too confident for my taste. There’s something unsettling about a person who really enjoys administering pain as her job. You wouldn’t want your dentist to say, “Oh boy! Looks like we’ve got a root canal today. This should be fun!” then crank up some AC/DC as he puts the laughing gas over your nose. I half-expected Teacher’s Pet to crack her knuckles and have the instructor squirt water into her mouth as a bell rang. Round two!
She grabbed the paper with one hand, steadied my abdomen with the other, and ripped that motherfucker off like it was a burning car on top of her newborn babe. The entire peanut gallery gave an audible ohhh. Granted, I don’t speak Hindi, but I’m pretty sure “Ohhh” translates to “I think you just ripped off that poor white girl’s labia.”
This is where I blacked out for a second. What I imagine happened is the Muscle held the wax strip above her head like a Mohican who had just scalped the enemy in a war.
Thankfully, all good things must come to an end, and the same goes for all horrific things. Everyone filed out and I was left to get dressed.
I lay there for a few minutes, gathering myself. I focused on my breathing like you do at the end of a yoga class, then peeked down to see the masterpiece. “That’s weird. It looks like I had a manatee in a headlock.” Holy fuck, it looked like I had a manatee in a headlock. Remember me telling you how sensitive my skin is? Well, after forty-five minutes of having essentially hot caramel poured on and ripped off of it, the poor thing had puffed out like Violet from Willy Wonka. I waddled out of that fancy salon looking like my crotch was shoplifting a neck pillow.
And for what? I sure as hell wasn’t going to put on a swimsuit anytime soon, because (a) it would be painful, and (b) it would look like I stored a Bundt cake in my pants. There was no way I was letting my boyfriend anywhere near my vagina. I taped off my nether regions like a murder scene.
By the time the swelling actually went down, the hair was back. Here’s what I don’t understand. Your hair is supposed to be a good quarter inch before you wax it. So, women who wax religiously, are your bikini lines just a constant cycle of no hair, tiny hair? Are your vages like little front lawns of pubes you are constantly landscaping? I’d just rather spend my time doing productive things, like knowing the ins and outs of every single Real Housewives franchise.
In the end, that experience left me with some scars. Emotional scars. There might be physical ones too, but I’ve just never gone downtown with a compact mirror to check. Besides, they would be covered by hair. Like the good Lord intended. Granted, I am not a religious person, but if I were, I would argue that God wants us all to be bushed out. Why would we grow hair if we weren’t supposed to rock it? He is clearly capable of making things hairless.
The same theory can be applied to weed. Why would God put weed on earth if we weren’t supposed to smoke it? Why would he create a person with the brilliant idea for Salt and Vinegar Kettle chips if he didn’t want me to eat them? Shortly after smoking that godly weed?
Speaking of hairless, you can follow Beanz on Instagram at @beanzhart. I am more passionate about Beanz becoming a star than all those Dance Moms combined.
At the end of the day, if someone doesn’t want to be with you because you aren’t perfectly groomed, then fuck that guy/girl! I mean, you can’t literally fuck them, because they have rejected you, but fuck them emotionally. They aren’t worth your time. Especially if the person wanting you to groom is a man with more hair on his balls than on his head. Let him know that you’ll shave it all off down there as long as you can turn it into a tiny Afro toupee for his shiny dome piece. This might sound extreme, but the expectation of women to be hairless while men sit around with Rip Van Winkle nuts is unfair.
So, those are my thoughts on waxing. Now that we’ve all experienced this together, pour yourself an Angry Brazilian and allow me to wax poetic. . . .
If you really want to go bare down there,
I suggest grabbing a bottle of Nair.
Smells like rotten eggs,
And goes on legs,
But at least it doesn’t tear.
Quickshots: Grooming Fails
As you know from the previous chapter, I have once, and only once, gotten my hoo-ha waxed. Perhaps that makes me unladylike. Perhaps that makes me the smartest woman alive. We may never know. But what I do know is that I am BAD at most lady things. Especially when it comes to grooming.
Side note: Why do we call it grooming? Is it because you need to get yourself looking fly if you ever want to land yourself a groom? That is probably a quick Google search, but who has the time? The tumbleweeds of pubes rolling around my bathroom aren’t gonna clean themselves.
Putting on Makeup
I don’t know if my problem is so much the actual application of makeup or the fact that my makeup bag always looks like Tatooine in Star Wars. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a powder compact that did not explode in my purse. After its inevitable combustion, every time I go to pull something out of my bag, the item is covered in a fine layer of powder. I gotta take my blush brush and clean off my wallet like a paleontologist cleaning dinosaur bones.
This is why I never buy expensive makeup. I might be the only author in the entire bookstore who still buys Wet n Wild.*
Besides the general upkeep of my products, there is the whole having-to-put-it-on thing, which I am terrible at. As far as skin makeup goes—i.e., blending and contouring and not just slapping on foundation to look like an Irish geisha—I’m useless.
Also, blush is useless to me. I have mild rosacea that is exacerbated by drinking alcohol and eating spicy foods—which is pretty much all I consume. And most of the time my beverage of choice is spicy alcohol! At least once a week you can hear me say, “Fuck it. I know I look like a sunburned Santa right now, but give me another one of them habanero margaritas, kind sir!” A couple of those bad boys and I get an insane hot, red pattern on my body. See below.
This particular night was too many spicy pineapple margs. My skin broke out into a crazy maplike pattern. As you can see, I’m sporting the flaccid boner outline of Florida, but I’m hoping one day it will be a treasure map. Goonies reboot, anyone?
And don’t get me started on eyeliner! How the hell am I supposed to hold something steady and draw a tiny line on my eyelid? It is physic
ally impossible for me to make it straight when half my vision is gone because my other eye is closed. I end up painting the eyeliner thicker and thicker to try and get both eyes to match, until I look like Amy Winehouse’s trashier cousin. I really should save myself some time and just use a jumbo Sharpie.
Taking Off Makeup
This is a completely nonexistent concept to me. I wake up every morning looking like the walk of shame, all my makeup still intact but smeared.
Normally this isn’t a huge deal because my daily look is tinted moisturizer, mascara, and lipstick; but there was a time in my life when I would rock half a MAC makeup counter on my face. And those mornings, my pillow would look like someone had tried to smother Tammy Faye. I’m talking, of course, about the glorious days when I was in a band.
“You were in a band? How is it possible that one average-size body could contain such a wealth of talent and charisma?” said No One.
It’s true—for six years and two albums, I was a singer in a band called Cudzoo and the Faggettes. “Cudzoo” because it was the drunken misspelling of the vine kudzu, which grows rampant in the South. And “Faggettes” because our band asked us not to name them something “gay.” It was the most fun. Our sound was the love child of a ’60s girl group and the B-52s, with matching shiny dresses and choreographed dance moves. But our backing band were all punk musicians. So it was intense but also sweet. Kind of like a spicy margarita.
Some of our onstage antics included breaking pencils with our butts and making audience members bong beers out of a giant penis.
We were made up of me; my friend Jess, who I’d met in New York; Erin, who I’d known since third grade; and Sarah. Sarah was our drummer and also happens to be a neuropsychologist—NBD. While Jess, Erin, and I sang our harmonies about walks of shame (“Sequins Before Noon”) and weird dance crazes (“The Toxic Shock”), we were backed up by Sarah and our rotating crew of male guitarists and bassists.*
We put on a damn good show, which of course meant wearing lots and lots of eyeliner. Six Jameson shots and eight Tecates during our set and you’d better believe I wasn’t taking off my makeup before bed. I would be lucky to get off my sequined dress and pillbox hat. Spoiler alert: I woke up in my sequined dress 80 percent of the time.
The mornings after our shows, I got to play my favorite game: Find the fake eyelashes. Usually they would be stuck to my pillow, making it look like some dollar-store version of Chairy from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. But it wasn’t always that easy. After a particularly raucous show, I could not for the life of me find my second fake eyelash. That is, until I went to pee. Apparently, in my sleep I had rubbed my eye super hard and then put my hand in my crotch. (Which, by the way, is my favorite sleeping position. Having your hand down your pants is comfortable. Al Bundy got it right. My fashion icon might be Peg Bundy, but my spirit animal is all Al.) There, perfectly placed in my vagina, were my fake lashes. If my pubes had been blond, it would’ve been the spitting image of Clitney Spears.
Haircuts
Some ladies absolutely love going to the salon. They have their particular stylist who is “the only person I would let near my bangs.” I, however, don’t think I’ve ever been to the same hairdresser twice.
Part of it is because I hate small talk. It’s not the actual act of getting my hair cut that bothers me—I could sit still and have someone wash and play with my hair all damn day. But what I don’t like is how part of a hairstylist’s job description is essentially being Barbara Walters. “What do you do?” “Do you like California?” Even worse is having to feign interest if they are oversharers. Just cut my hair; I don’t need to know your entire diet plan in the months leading up to your sister-in-law’s wedding.
I’m sure I sound like a total bitch saying this, but dem’s the facts. I am waiting for the day when a hair salon opens up called “Shut Up Cuts: You’ll be cute, and we’ll be mute,” and I will have them put me down for a cut every eight weeks from now till eternity. But until then my normal look will be split ends and letting my mane grow so long that I look like I wandered off from a Phish concert.
Nails
I’m just gonna say it. My feet are disgusting. I am looking down at them as I write this and they resemble two turds attached to hairy tree trunks. These little piggies look like they’ve already been to the slaughterhouse. Both big toes have one little dab of red polish toward the tip, but the others are totally blank. This means that I have gone so long without a pedicure that my last pedicure is almost completely grown out. A quick google has told me that an average toenail takes about a year to a year and a half to completely grow out. That is how long it’s been since my toenails were painted! I could’ve gotten a pedicure, gotten pregnant, and my baby would be crawling all before I’d gotten another pedicure.
Speaking of Google! If you type the name of basically any woman in the entertainment industry into the search bar, the third or fourth fill-in is that person’s name and the word feet. Seriously. If you type in “Mamrie,” Google will fill in the top searches of:
Mamrie Hart
Mamrie Hart Hannah Hart sisters
Mamrie Hart boyfriend
Mamrie Hart annoying
Mamrie Hart feet
Mamrie Hart owes me money
I hate to bust some people’s bubbles, but there is no way you want to click on pictures of my feet. You could have the most intense foot fetish imaginable and that one search would make it disappear. It’s like one of those camps that terrible Christian parents send their sons to “cure” them of homosexuality. Two pics of my feet, or one small whiff, and you’d be able to go to shoe stores without a boner. These dogs aren’t just barking; they are starring in a Sarah McLachlan–scored ASPCA commercial.
On top of the general aesthetic, the general odor of my feet is that of a Dumpster that’s been cooking in hell. If I have a long day of wearing flats sans socks, I have to leave my shoes outside my house. My neighbors probably think I am a traditional Japanese woman or OCD with white carpeting.
I need to get a proper pedicure, but it’s almost been too long. It’s like when you go seven years without seeing a dentist (What? Just me? Pardon me, princess.) and you are terrified of what the dentist is going to say. There’s a moment when you think, Fuck it, I’ll just let my teeth fall out. I like soup! I would rather never eat solid foods again than have the following conversation with my dentist:
Ma’am, I hate to tell you but your teeth have so many cavities, for a second I thought they were tiny cubes of Swiss cheese.
I don’t understand. I brush two or three times a day and always use Listerine despite thinking it’s a sin to spit out alcohol.
When’s the last time you flossed?
Hmmm . . . What year is this?
Followed by me being replaced with a cloud of dust as I bolt to my car.
I feel at this point if I went in for a pedicure, the poor soul having to do it would pull out a file. Not for my calluses, but to just take off my feet because they have no hope.
But it’s not just pedicures that a well-kept woman is supposed to have. No, no, there are also manicures. Women are obsessed with manicures. You cannot go on Instagram or Tumblr without seeing an elaborate manicure that someone shelled out who knows how much for. I have never been that girl. A lot of it has to do with the fact that my twenties were spent bartending. There is zero point in putting on polish, let alone paying money for it, when your hands are going to be in a sink washing martini glasses 70 percent of your shift.
And some girls are obsessed with always having their nails done up elaborately. (cough) Zooey Deschanel (cough). I’m all for rocking a themed look, but is it really necessary to have each nail painted with a different Duggar for the season premiere? Do you really gotta have someone slave over your cuticles with a toothpick to have a different disciple on each nail for Easter? Are you nervous you won’t remember to attend the Oscars if you don
’t paint all the nominees for Best Picture on your hands?
I could understand if the painting served a purpose, like painting answers to questions on your nails before a big test or a list of emergency contacts. But there’s no way I’d spend eighty bucks on an accessory that goes away in a week. I would never pick out a cute scarf for eighty bones if it had a warning label that read, THIS SCARF DISINTEGRATES IN 7 DAYS. Not for me, no thank you. If you see me and it looks like I have a manicure, look closer. You’ll probably see it’s just leftover buffalo-wing-flavored pretzel residue that I’ve yet to lick off.
Plucking Eyebrows
As you guys already know, hair removal on my body is not my strong suit. But the only thing worse than having to shave off your fur is having to pluck it off. It’s exhausting and tedious, the grooming equivalent of the board game Operation.
I inevitably get my eyebrows waxed, they look banging for a month, and then I spend the next two months watching the Grouchos slowly come in like weeds in a backyard. But hey, at least it’s not like my senior year of high school when I discovered waxing and then went way too far with it. If I’d taken eyeliner and drawn two dots over each pencil-thin brow, they would’ve looked like two frowny-face emojis.
As bad as my eyebrow game can be, it is nothing compared to my sweet, late Grandma Nette. Grandma Nette was the older of two sisters, her baby sister being Audrey. If you’ve ever seen the movie Gypsy, consider my grandma to be Louise and Audrey to be Baby June. They were living together in their seventies, and while my grandma had slowed down, Audrey was still a wild child, going out dancing, rotating boyfriends, rocking a cute bleached-blond bob, the works. And Audrey wasn’t afraid of going the extra mile to improve her looks.
