If you're looking for body waxing, please I beg you to look elsewhere.
Due to scheduling conflicts, I missed my window for a maintenance brazilian at my regular spots and shopping around, Styles won the price game and after reading the reviews, I figured it wouldn't be the best wax ever but nothing I couldn't handle. I WAS WRONG. I've been waxing for close to 8 years, and I have never had a worse experience (including at training salons and when I used to wax my own bikini line). I could look past the quirks of the location - the basement of a house location was not what I expected, but wood paneling never hurt nobody and the parking lot is a mess to get in/out of - but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
She keeps her wax hot - like so hot it felt like I was being burned (never had that experience before, even when I did my own I'd test on my inner wrist first) and it took me repetitively telling her/asking her to turn the temp down to get to a manageable level. When I was teaching myself to wax, I discovered that if you didn't put enough wax on your stick then it runs out and causes a very particular feeling of hair pulling - makes sense that every once and a while this might happen but I'd say more than 50% of her applications went like this and man, it hurt. Once it came to the actual removing of hair, OUCH OUCH GODDAMN OUCH. She uses strip wax and ripped and pulled and all together seemed clueless about proper technique. All this while having me pull my own skin taut - something I've never ever done elsewhere - and let's just say that my angle, no instruction and constantly wincing in pain, this was pretty ineffective. To say I was thankful when it was over would be an understatement. Everything was gone, pain is temporary, yada yada. THEN she charged me more than her listed price on her website (I didn't correct her because I assumed I was misremembering, but no, checked when I got home, and she added $10). Ok, whatever, I'm waxed and already know I'm never coming back. But of course, my saga can't end here. I'd noticed more follicles bleeding than I'd ever seen before when I'd gotten dressed but when I got home, a massive purple bruise had developed from my thigh all the way in on one side which has NEVER happened to me before. I'd post a picture but no one should have to see that. The cherry on top of this awful experience was that regrowth started within a couple days (like, before said bruise had faded). So, basically the whole process was null and void. Cool.
I consulted with a waxer I trust afterwards and here's what she told me - bruising isn't totally uncommon, it can happen when an area is waxed over too many times, the hair is removed in the wrong direction or the skin isn't pulled taut (ding ding ding) but she seemed shocked at the severity of mine and she was surprised it would happen with a professional (typically more a do-it-yourself consequence). Such fast regrowth is a sign that instead of removing the whole hair, the hair was instead broken at/near the surface so the results would be about the same as shaving. She was also surprised I'd been asked to manage the tautness of my skin because I wouldn't have the right idea which way the wax was being pulled so my efforts would be pretty useless.
So, tl;dr version: Just DON'T. Don't be like me, spend the extra money, and avoid the burning wax + painful ripping + mega bruising + short lived results. It was an experience that I would only wish on my worst enemy (and even then, only if I were feeling particularly cruel). read more
