Beauty Test Drive: I Got My Upper Lip Threaded

Since I’ve literally got the sparsest eyebrows ever (they don’t grow, at all, I’ve tried), every four or five months I’ll decide that I need to go in for a threading session to clean up all the baby-fine, white-blond fuzz surrounding my brows. Because my body hair is very blond, it pretty much isn’t visible, so I mostly don’t bother to do anything about it. I consider myself lucky in that way—and what I don’t spend on waxes and constant facial hair upkeep I make up for with bi-monthly trips to my colorist — and the hefty bills that come with.

Anyway, a friend recently was bemoaning the fact that she had darker upper lip hair and hasn’t found a good-enough way to get rid of it. She’s bleached it, waxed it, even shaved it and finally stumbled upon threading … where she found a bit more success. Flash forward to me, walking into the threading salon to get my baby-fuzz brow hair cleaned up last week. So, there I am, head back in the chair, with the upper lip hair convo fresh in my mind and I say, “Can you also do my upper lip?” Mis-take! Oh wow was it a bad move …First, I’ll start with the obvious. The pain. Holy hell, was it painful! Even though I only go in about three times a year, threading my brows doesn’t hurt—it mostly just feels like an irritating pricking sort of feeling. But threading your upper lip? It’s a Defcon One sort of pain—I found myself unintentionally crying! Tears were rolling down my cheeks (the threader lady had to give me a tissue, embarrassingly enough), and I was definitely making some sort of weird-ugly facial contortions. After the torture stopped, I was, at the very least, excited for a pretty and clean upper-lip (after the red-swelling aspect of it all went down). Not so much. I woke up a day later to little white heads all over my upper lip. And a week later I am still battling an odd upper lip pimple here and there!

Never again. Not only did it hurt like a you-know-what and gave me zits where there never have been before, but the actual hair removal is totally sparse-looking! What about you guys, have you ever gone this route with facial hair? What happened?