To write or not to write? It's late, but I think I'll have time and I'm not tired because I just drank a glass of Coke and anyway, we just got done working out not two hours ago so there's still residual energy pumping from that. Yes, it is only 11pm. To think I used to be a night person....

I did the deed: I had my legs waxed today.

I called this morning to a place called Crystal Nails where Catherine used to go every week to have her nails done. She said they did waxing there too and while she'd never done it, friends of hers had. I figured if her friends went there then it was OK. They had an opening at 4:30, and I was there.

(Dave is out there watching the World Cup, yelling, screaming, moaning orgasmically. Yesterday he bellowed out with some outrageous level of exhilaration and I said, "I wish I made you scream like that." Know what he said? "Me too." Damn. He's so much more quick with the wit than I.)

I really didn't know what to do when I got to Crystal Nails. First of all, the whole building is some kind of health center for women. It's old and working hard at its decripitancy. Crystal Nails itself is just one tiny room at the end of a hallway. The door was shut, like it was a closet, and once inside it was still a closet but crowded with two other foreign women getting their nails done, a few Korean women running around, and a couple tables for laying on at one end of the room. I loved this place, by the end that is. I was there for an hour and had plenty of time to soak in the atmosphere. It was like what is always pictured when one talks of a salon in a small town where everyone goes, and everyone knows each other - a Cheers for women. It's a small business, with shit all over the walls; old beauty supplies lying around; and one old lady who seemed to just be hanging out and who, while walking around, would hike up her smock to scratch her back, revealing her underwear. There also seemed to be an inordinate number of obnoxious flower patterns from the 70's decorating the place and I thought it fit with the relative age of all the beauty equipment, including the device used to keep the wax hot and liquid. I felt like I was in some kind of small town USA, in a salon where all the women knew each other and the act of manipulating one's personal aesthetics cultivated an intimacy not possible in other larger and more sterile environments out in the sexually integrated world. It was like being at a slumber party. Except, since this was my first time there, I was the only girl who didn't know anyone while all the others chatted like the old friends they are.

I was nervous, which makes me meek. I totally didn't know the protocol, but had thought about it on the way over and decided that definitely this task requires near nudity on the lower half. I looked around the small, open room and disliked the idea of undressing in front of strange women. In a locker room sure, but not for this. As it turns out, there was a curtain like at hospitals and everything was cool.

Everything was cool.

Michelle worked on me. Said she'd been doing it for seven years and sort of talked me through it as I was obviously clueless and wided-eyed. She took a lot of time fishing out ingrown hairs and, I guess, doing the best job she could. She said the first impression is most important because it determines whether or not the person returns. Though it wasn't pleasant, and actually quite painful in parts, I feel glad I did it. Nice to have the hair gone again. I thought to myself that only lovers and gynecologists are treated with the unique perspective Michelle got today. Thought about how women groom each other's bodies and it makes us feel more open and comfortable among each other. I miss out on that a lot not having sisters or a mother. Odd that I feel more comfortable with a new lover than an aesthetician whose job is to prune the parts liberated by the 70's.

Speaking of pruning: When I was growing out the hair on my legs I realized that I've never ever seen how the hair grows naturally. I was shaving by early puberty. It was interesting to see how thick it was below the knee, the little thick patch on the face of each thigh. There was almost no hair on my inner thighs, knees and ankles. I disliked that it was so black when the hair on my head is not.

I think it's strange that when I started shaving I was at an age when make-up was not allowed. Somehow wearing make-up was rushing womanhood but shaving was an acceptable - indeed an encouraged - avenue toward it. Why was I encouraged to shave but told not to wear make-up? Isn't it the same? Is it like that for other girls?

It goes so much deeper than this; don't know if I can do it justice tonight.

I've thought about the whole make-up thing. I've never been addicted to make-up but I totally enjoy it like I do jewelry or my favorit shirt. I don't feel like I have to wear it to be presentable, like other people I know, and I feel good about that because then make-up does not oppress me. I am a lipstick feminist, as my friend says.

But body hair removal, that's a behavior so ingrained that I remove it even without thinking what it means to remove it. I never even really thought about it too much until last winter when I was just tired of shaving and thought I'd let it all grow and was so surprised at how horrified Dave was; and just recently when Tom said he heard some little kid he knew (of?) say he didn't even know women had body hair. I thought that was fucked up and that our society is fucked up for valuing something so unnatural. But then, I have to go no farther than my own pits to see the stubbly truth. Man. I've been around many women who don't shave at all and I've thought about how it's a much bolder statement than merely not wearing make-up. Is it more liberating too? I don't know. The politics of image are so much more complex than sexism, for it encompasses all groups and serves to classify us all. Choosing not to remove body hair puts one out of one group and into another - a statement. It is, in essence, no different than modifying or not modifying any other thing for the sake of image because not creating image is itself, an image.

I've decided to ride this wave of vanity I'm on right now. I have come to the conclusion that a healthy level of vanity is a necessary requisite for exercising. That big mirror spanning the wall in an aerobics room so that all the participants can constantly admire their ability and their bodies: Dave and I, we crowd each other out trying to admire ourselves in the bathroom mirror while we workout. I figure the changes perceived provide just the motivation necessary to keep me going. In other ways, a little vanity pulls me out of Nine and into Three, which is a really good thing for a Nine: I need all the motivation I can get, whatever the source.