OMG

I may not have my license, but I already have better marketing materials than 90% of my industry.

See full facial menu here.

Facials are on a sliding scale from $10 to $30, depending on the cost of the products, whether or not you bought me the products in question for Christmas/my birthday, the length of the treatment, how much I like you, and how much (if any) you are related to me.

Glory be to Sara Christian, also the banner artist, for her super cute design!

A fine financial investment

Did your college professors know everyone in the 60+ person lecture hall by name and give out See’s lollipops for Christmas? Did they get birthday cakes to celebrate each month’s birthday kids, and offer free coffee and bagels during 8:00 AM classes? Did they help you make wardrobe decisions for important nights out and/or dole out hugs and relationship advice when students came to school crying? When you fell victim to an overenthusiastic waxer and had one eyebrow raised in a permanent quizzical expression, did any of those supposedly illustrious professors help to make them more even? Our teachers do all this and more for a paltry $26 per unit. The University of California is a scam.

Every day I’m hustlin’

So I have this amazing classmate who can make pretty much any cosmetic or frilly skin-and-body product from scratch, and has actually authored three books on the subject in her native Japan. She has been making individual custom-colored, custom-pigmented lip glosses for people in our class gratis—lip glosses which take her hours to make and require dozens of expensive ingredients and specialty cosmetic-making equipments.

I insisted that she should charge and told her I’d help her make a one-page catalog to hand out to our class of product whores, who can always be counted on to buy truckloads of whatever tiny bottles of cream are nearest. “I’ll think about it,” she giggled. “Where is your killer instinct?!” I demanded obnoxiously, “demanding obnoxiously” being one thing my American upbringing has taught me to do nigh professionally. My other classmate wisely advised, “If she doesn’t have it, you can’t give it to her.” Probably true. But it is a continual source of frustration for me that people with rare and highly marketable talents so often devalue their skills and are too shy or scared to make money off something they enjoy.

Which brings me to this question: is it wrong to make money off your friends? The knee-jerk answer might be “yes,” but after reflecting on my classmate’s situation, I’ve decided that it’s actually necessary to make money off your friends to establish yourself as a professional and grow your business. An entrepreneur has no one to sell to initially except her friends. It’s a nice and powerful feeling to be able to hook it up with freebies, but so often those “freebies” cost time and money and are actually the result of lots of effort that goes unseen and perhaps underappreciated by the lucky recipient.

All of this is basically to say that I decided to take my own advice. As of 2010, I’m cutting down on the free facials. It turns out that I’m spending a lot of money on classes and products for making my facials and waxing better and widening the range of services I can offer. I’m working on my own little catalog of services that you’ll see posted on the blog soon. And I hope that you will graciously allow me to make money off doing something I have grown to truly enjoy.

Dominatrix of wax

With my feminist armpits and 70s porno beav, I’m not a likely hair removal evangelist. But I went into waxing unenthused and came out a fanatic. Waxing and extracting—for a client, the most painful, uncomfortable parts of a spa procedure—are by far the most enjoyable to me. Because I am a sadist.

I’m still navigating the delicate relationship between waxer and waxee. If there a polite way to suggest “Would you like me to wax off your post-menopausal goatee in addition to your ‘stache?” I have not found it. At the Brazilian waxing class some of the girls attended, the instructor told the model to get on all fours and stick her butt out “porno-style,” exposing her butt hair and acne to the class. How is professionalism possible under these circumstances, I ask you?

Waxing has affirmed my new theory that pain enhances pleasure. It’s the only way to explain our clients’ obsession with getting every last blackhead removed, people who wake up at 4:00 AM and run for miles to “feel the burn,” our dogged pursuit after friends and lovers who treat us badly, the product promise “the tingle tells you it’s working,” for that matter, the popularity of the Brazilian wax. We’ve been taught that pain is good for us, that it’s character-building, that eating your vegetables is good for your health. So it’s no wonder that we get confused and chase after pain, even when the pain is senseless and unnecessary. We think we’re getting something out of it, even when we’re not.

There is a limit, of course, but a little bit of pain embedded in a pleasurable experience makes it that much better. Not that you should be afraid of scheduling a waxing appointment with me.

How to draw on your face

The girls in my class are frighteningly knowledgeable about makeup. One of them correctly guessed the eyeshadow brand and color I was wearing without any hints whatsoever. So I was excited when three of the best makeup artists in class did demos and shared a dazzling array of makeup tips. It would probably take years of Allure subscriptions or hours of YouTube watching to collect this quantity of knowledge.

• Real hair brushes are best for powder products, while synthetic brushes are preferable for use with cream products.
• Short, firm kabuki brushes are good for pushing powder into skin. When powder is applied more gently, with a looser brush, it can migrate and settle into lines and creases. (Editor’s note: Velour powder puffs are also good, but press, don’t wipe.)
• How to use bronzer to contour: Apply in a 3 shape down the side of the face. Down the temples, over the cheekbones, then out to the jawline and onto the chin. If you have a large forehead or are wearing your hair up, you may want to use bronzer to shade along the hairline in the forehead area.
• Want to use both blush and bronzer? Apply blush using downward strokes along the top of your cheekbones. Apply bronzer using upward strokes along the bottom of your cheekbones.
• If you have acne, indented scars, or other skin texture issues, stay away from shimmer products.
• For sagging eyelids, Asian eyes, or eyes with small lids, apply a thin layer of eyeliner in between the lashes instead of on top of them.
• How to use highlighter: Apply it in a C shape cupping your eye, from just under the eyebrow along the outside of your eye to the very top of your cheekbone. Also dot it on the top of your cheekbone (the least fleshy part).
• Mineral makeup does not penetrate the skin. Because of this, it won’t cause any skin problems, but it also can’t look all that natural because it’s too matte and powdery. (Editor’s note: I feel so validated; mineral makeup always looks fake on me but everyone else seems to love it.)
• If you have dark hair, shade your brows with a lighter color than what you think your brow color is. If you have light hair, shade your brows with a darker color.
• Don’t angle the outer halves of your brows down toward your cheekbones. This pulls down the corners of the eyes. Instead, angle them outward toward your temples as much as possible.
• To make blush last longer, sandwich it between thin layers of powder.
• If you have normal or dry skin, consider using a face primer. Without a primer, your skin will drink moisture from your foundation throughout the day, shortening the life of your makeup. With a primer, your skin will absorb moisture from the primer instead.

Bitches are not kidding about their extractions

The facial I gave last week was going fine until I told the client that one blackhead wasn’t mature and could not be removed without scarring. She had already made her next facial appointment with us, so I told her to ask her esthetician about it next time, as it might be ready to come out by then.

Not only did she not tip me, she left this review of my services:

Enjoy washing your face, but wish it were more expensive?

This is a giant electric toothbrush for your face by the makers of Sonicare. Its list price is US $225.00. Why not just use your fingers, you ask. Well, why use an electric toothbrush? To be fancy.

I have no investment in endorsing the Clarisonic for functional reasons. I bought it (at a discount – contact me before purchasing) because I figured clients would appreciate the undeniable novelty and joy of a motorized brush street-sweeping their faces. But still, I was curious. I used it on the side of my face with more freckles and more scars – to make it harder for the Clarisonic to win – for two weeks, forcing people on the street to stroke my face and guess which side had been sonic’d.

Days 1-5 – Correct votes: 50%

“[The Clarisonic side] looks plumper.” GREAT.

Days 6-10 – Correct votes: 67%

Unnervingly, my friend Chris instantly knew that he had chosen the wrong side based on my facial expression after he guessed. He said he can tell when someone’s hiding something because they instantly look down and to the left. Tips for life!

Days 11-15 – Correct votes: 50%

A much higher percentage of people in my esthetics class got it right. Civilians weren’t great at this game. The people who guessed correctly also insisted that the Clarisonic side still looked better than the control side after I began using it on my entire face, which means my face will be permanently uneven, all in the name of science.

The thing most people who guessed correctly mentioned was that the Clarisonic side was more glowy, shiny, and lighter in tone. I continued to break out evenly on both sides. Some days I felt like I could see a difference and some days not, but when I finally started using it on my entire face instead of just one side, I definitely could tell it was doing something.

Overall verdict is that I think it’s very much a luxury item, but it may be beneficial for people with dull, thick skin with large pores. I would not recommend it to people whose skin is thin, sensitive/prone to redness, highly acneic, or very dry. I also would not recommend it to those people who are fond of gadgets, but know deep down inside that they’re too lazy to use an appliance twice a day to wash their faces.

Functionality-wise, the Clarisonic is fun and easy to use, fully submergible, and you can go 2-3 weeks without charging the battery.

Made my day

FACT: My classmate’s cat, a sphynx, is the niece of Mr. Bigglesworth. And she has the breeding papers to prove it.

On extractions

A woman came into our class to demonstrate extractions and we all got up close and personal in her demonstration model’s face. I had been timidly prodding at my classmates’ faces all week in lab, unable to eject anything out of fear that I would hurt or scar them. The guest speaker “popped up” the crease on the side of the model’s nose, pressing and squeezing her skin hard, and white oil and pus burst out of every pore, like fireworks, like a pasta maker. Enchanted, I attempted this technique on my very first client—and it was a success. It turns out it has to hurt to work. Sorry.

Irrational exuberance

I didn’t really know what was behind my fascination with drag queens and drag-queen-esque women until I read Rich Juzwiak’s explanation of his Madonna love:

People wonder what attracts gay men to her and the larger-than-life women of her ilk. I think some of it has to do with the fact that when you are gay, there are really no restrictions on taste — you can enjoy the girliest of girly things because what are people going to do, call you a fag for liking something? They already have. But that’s more circumstantial than specific. More to the point, I think gay men take an active interest in Madonna, because when whipped into her entertaining frenzy, she seems so free. While masculinity is so often defined by restraint (Sports have so many rules! Real men don’t cry!), iconic women like Madonna are characterized by their lack of it. They’re allowed to put it all out there, to be as emotional as they want (maybe they aren’t always praised for it, but they don’t receive questions about their womanhood or death threats as a result). For those of us who feel repressed in any way for being what we are, the Madonnas of the world offer a vicarious thrill, an exuberance in one’s identity. It’s something to aspire to.