Since being back from Delhi I've been trying (even more than I did before) to get a lot of India in America. I'm lucky because there is a big desi population in the Twin Cities area. That means being able to buy ajman seeds at the grocery store and eat fresh, puffy puris at restaurants and watch Bollywood movies in real theaters(!). It's not quite warm enough to be wearing a full salwar-kameez, but I have instituted Kurta Mondays when I'm at school. Please come soon, Spring, I'd like to be able to wear full suits and air dry clothes again!
One time about a year and a half ago my friend Leigh told me she buys mehendi cones and has her eyebrows threaded in the Indian area of her old neighborhood. I told her I had never heard of threading and she was surprised in a way that made it seem like I had been missing out on something amazing like raspberry lemonade in summertime or Prince's Purple Rain album real loud on the record player or Freaks and Geeks dvd marathons with oreos dipped in milk. And since I really like all of those things I started searching the internet for a place to try having my eyebrows threaded. It took a long time, but eventually I found a huge list of women in my area who thread and apply henna and cut hair and do pedicures and all sorts of things you'd have done by the beautician in Delhi, but instead of having the beautician come to your house in India you go to their house in the States.
Turns out Localfiles serves as a sort of bulletin board for desis in a few different regions of the U.S., including Minneapolis. It's got a name like a singles network or something, but Localfiles is actually how I know about most Indian things in my area, like Bollywood at the discount theater or Curry Up Deli's sweets counter (which I still haven't sampled because sweets outside India are notorious for being a let down and I do not want to be let down). I don't mind a little awkwardness (you know, showing up to a stranger's house with hairy eyebrows), so I think threading is a really great deal. I've had my eyebrows done for $4-5 and that is crazy cheap, especially compared to having them waxed at a salon (at least $10) or even buying a waxing kit (around $10 maybe? and scary). I'm awful at shaping while tweezing, so I don't mind how painful it is to thread. Plus it reminds me of hanging out at my friend Caitlin's auntie's and chitchatting with her animated beautician, who is really beautiful herself, or my auntie's beautician, who told me her husband is just "thik hai" ("ok"), but that her children are really great.
This video shows one method for threading. It's different than the way I've had my eyebrows done (with the beautician holding one end of the thread in her mouth), but it does work. I don't mind the thread-in-mouth method because the whole thing is a really casual process. My friend Reeta told me that she would thread her friends' eyebrows for them while they were at university in Delhi. She learned from watching other people thread and then she just picked up a spool and tried it and figured out better types of thread to use from there and started threading her friends in her hostel (hostel is the term for a dorm in India). Sometimes I wish I were cool with rocking the unibrow like Kajol or Frida, but I'm realizing that I actually sort of enjoy having them threaded. It's comforting for me, or reassuring maybe?, knowing that women all over South Asia and the Middle East do the same thing. I really miss beautician days in Delhi.
Turns out Localfiles serves as a sort of bulletin board for desis in a few different regions of the U.S., including Minneapolis. It's got a name like a singles network or something, but Localfiles is actually how I know about most Indian things in my area, like Bollywood at the discount theater or Curry Up Deli's sweets counter (which I still haven't sampled because sweets outside India are notorious for being a let down and I do not want to be let down). I don't mind a little awkwardness (you know, showing up to a stranger's house with hairy eyebrows), so I think threading is a really great deal. I've had my eyebrows done for $4-5 and that is crazy cheap, especially compared to having them waxed at a salon (at least $10) or even buying a waxing kit (around $10 maybe? and scary). I'm awful at shaping while tweezing, so I don't mind how painful it is to thread. Plus it reminds me of hanging out at my friend Caitlin's auntie's and chitchatting with her animated beautician, who is really beautiful herself, or my auntie's beautician, who told me her husband is just "thik hai" ("ok"), but that her children are really great.
This video shows one method for threading. It's different than the way I've had my eyebrows done (with the beautician holding one end of the thread in her mouth), but it does work. I don't mind the thread-in-mouth method because the whole thing is a really casual process. My friend Reeta told me that she would thread her friends' eyebrows for them while they were at university in Delhi. She learned from watching other people thread and then she just picked up a spool and tried it and figured out better types of thread to use from there and started threading her friends in her hostel (hostel is the term for a dorm in India). Sometimes I wish I were cool with rocking the unibrow like Kajol or Frida, but I'm realizing that I actually sort of enjoy having them threaded. It's comforting for me, or reassuring maybe?, knowing that women all over South Asia and the Middle East do the same thing. I really miss beautician days in Delhi.
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