A Real Hairless, New Yorker

Looking back on my 2001 J Sisters experience

Sex and the City

When you tell people that you lived in New York City in 2001, there are a lot of questions that come up, and none of them are about your pubic hair.

In an episode of Sex and the City that aired in 2000 (S3, E14), Carrie Bradshaw was visiting L.A. and got a Brazilian bikini wax. It was well understood at the time that even though the spa was in L.A., the scene was based on the infamous J Sisters salon in Manhattan.

All I knew is that if Carrie Bradshaw was getting a Brazilian, then so was I. 

“A martini and a glass of water,” I ordered from the bartender at the closest bar to the J Sisters salon. The Cosmo article said to take two Advil with a glass of water and a martini 30 minutes before your appointment. I wondered how many bright-eyed, full-bushed twentysomethings he had served martinis to.

As soon as the Cosmo article came out, my roommate and I called and made the appointments. “Two Brazilian bikini waxes, please,” we shouted into the phone, forgetting our plan to sound cool and apathetic. We couldn’t wait to become real, hairless New Yorkers. 

On the morning of the appointment, we woke up, did full hair and makeup, donned our finest Old Navy dresses and Rocket Dog flip flops and headed uptown. On the subway ride into Manhattan, we took turns reading and re-reading the article, making sure we had everything. Advil? Check. Cotton panties? Check. A bar where we could get martinis? Check.

The J Sisters salon was a late ’90s, early aughts New York institution. From their website I learned that Jocely, Jonice, Janea, Joyce, Juracy, Jussara and Judeseia, collectively known as the J Sisters, began their training in their family-run salon in Vitoria, Brazil where they were taught a “strong foundation on personal grooming.” As the salon grew, the sisters took a chance on introducing Brazilian bikini waxing to the U.S. “In Brazil, waxing is part of our culture because bikinis are so small,” Jonice explains. “We thought it was an important service to add because personal care is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity.”

I don’t know what I expected to see when I walked into the J Sisters salon. New Yorkers like a secret; they like their privacy, which I assumed extended to matters involving their labia. But this place was packed. There were women everywhere, in varying states of distress. The lobby was cramped with large gold chairs, a long chandelier on a too-low ceiling and a wall of askew celebrity headshots.

It wasn’t very “New York” to go somewhere that this many people knew about. But it also wasn’t very “New York” to have a full bush, so we checked in and took a seat.

When my name was called, I followed the woman (sister?) to a makeshift room, like the kind they make out of partitions when you’re giving blood. I jumped up on the small waxing table and she told me to take off my underwear and lift my dress. As I began to lie back, I noticed it: a framed, autographed 8 x 10 headshot of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. I prayed to our Lady of Hairless Vaginas, CBK, to give me the strength to make it through this experience.

“Raise your legs,” the J sister said. I was confused and hesitated, so she grabbed me by the ankles and raised my legs over my head. If you’re having trouble visualizing this, imagine a 24-year old having her diaper changed in a Red Cross under the watchful gaze of a beautiful, blonde celebrity.

The J sister grabbed an industrial size bottle of baby powder and shook it at my vagina like she was shaking a martini. Was this why Cosmo recommended drinking a martini before the appointment? Was this all one big, inside joke?

She dipped a wooden stick into a gurgling pot of hot wax and used the stick to cover my labia and pubic bone with wax. Then she applied thin cotton strips to my wax-covered skin. Without warning, she ripped the cotton strips off in a jerk so strong that my body slid down the table and I passed out.

When I came to, I looked at Carolyn Bessette and wondered why someone married to a Kennedy would subject herself to this. Then the J sister was pulling me off the table, laughing, and saying that all first-timers pass out, but that I would get used to it.

I shakily put my underwear back on and lowered my black dress, which was covered in baby powder. As I walked back to the reception area, my roommate walked out of her partition looking thrilled and not at all as traumatized as I felt. She shouted, “There was an autographed headshot of Gwyneth Paltrow in my room! Want to come back next month and do it again?”

Walking back to the subway, I was in so much pain from the friction of my underwear on my tender, raw skin, that I reached down, took my panties off and threw them in a trashcan on the street. The leg holes were covered in blood, dried wax, cotton strips and baby powder. When I pulled them off, a little bit of leg skin came off with them. 

Hairless, swollen and potentially bleeding, I Basic Instinct-ed it the whole subway ride back to Brooklyn.

We got off the L-train and debated calling a car service to drive us to our apartment, but neither of us could afford it. I walked the seven blocks with the exaggerated straddle of an actor in a Pace Picante commercial. We made it to our apartment, where I lowered myself gently to the futon where I slept. I raised my dress over my hips, spread my legs and pointed my throbbing, swollen vagina towards the box fan in the window.

My roommate, however, was JAZZED. She wanted to take her new hairless vagina out on the town. I still couldn’t put on underwear, but she had somehow managed to wiggle into her “going out” jeans. I took more Advil, applied some Neosporin to the flesh wound I made when I ripped my panties off in the middle of 58th Street, and followed her back into the city.

The night, like most nights, was a bust. Despite having more than a few drinks bought for us by guys who looked like they could potentially not be from New Jersey, we left alone. Just me, my roommate and our expensively waxed vaginas.

I never did go back to the J Sisters salon. I found a place in Williamsburg that would do it for half the cost. But every time I heard or read mention of that famed familial, Brazilian salon on the Upper East Side, I’d think of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and feel the tiniest of twinges in my hairless, New York vagina.

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I wrote this essay years ago and never did anything with it. When Virginia Sole-Smith wrote about bikini season and body hair recently, I thought I’d polish this up and publish it. Thanks for reading it!