sugar

Sometimes I hate being a woman. The hairy problems that we solve back home with waxing, is taken care of by 'sugaring' here in Egypt. Very similar concept, involving something sticky being ripped off your skin to remove the hair from its roots. But so very different and more torturous in practice.

If you know how waxing works, you'll understand why sugaring is so painful. Firstly, they use a dry palm-sized lump of sugar paste — very, very crucially different to the hot liquid wax I'm used to. It’s like dry waxy play-dough. They spread (drag) the sugar on your skin, and being dry, it pulls at your hair, causing agonizing pain. And no, they don’t do a patch of skin all in one shot: the lump is spread over an inch and yanked off, and the same thing is repeated numerous times all over your skin, until you are about to die of pain and agony or at least be taken out of the salon with handcuffs because you boxed the sugaring lady out cold as a reflex action. And they don’t even lie you down in a nice bed, you just sit on a chair and hope for the best.

The first time I went for a sugaring session, I was going to do a full body session, but after the first ‘section’ of my body, I told the lady that I change my mind, I don’t wanna do everything. But, you might find this hard to believe, she wouldn’t LET ME. She just wouldn’t take no for an answer, she kept trying to convince me to finish the job, and finally, after she managed to convince me to do just a little bit more, I got a phonecall, and just because I was distracted and couldn’t quite shout bloody murder down the phone — the sneaky little thing went and did it all!

Prices: Maadi, Road 233, one salon charges me 10 LE for underarms. The salon 50m down from it charges 20 LE!