It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway: And Other Thoughts on Moving Forward

by Elizabeth Passarella

I wrote thousands of words about eyebrow threading, which of course has been around for centuries but had yet to break through to the world of white beauty editors. My editor sent me to Chinatown to try what she’d been told was a “string facial.” I sat on a cushion in the living room of an elderly Chinese woman, who zipped and pulled the twisted string across every millimeter of my face, from my forehead down to my clavicle. I’d entered her apartment with no idea what the treatment entailed, so having a woman moving her face in a pecking motion so close to mine that our eyebrows rubbed together was paralyzing. I didn’t know where she’d stop. My belly button? Several times she paused to say, “Tough. Tough,” after breaking a string on my wiry sideburns. I’d heard the same thing from a bikini waxer. “You look fair, but you have some Eastern European in you, no?” she’d declared. The first draft of that threading story was terrible. I began with a deep dive into my hair removal history, including weekly electrolysis in college and one at-home waxing disaster where I chickened out on pulling off the strip and attempted to slowly dissolve the wax with hot water and rubbing alcohol. Many editors would just rewrite your piece. Amy was patient and encouraging. She gave nudges and suggestions and extra time until I landed on a draft good enough to send to Anna. It came back with the blessed seal of approval: “AWOK: Anna Wintour OK” was scrawled across the top. A humble threading salo...