There are people who can endure great pain without saying a word, who can stoically suffer while in total agony. I am not one of those people. Basically, I have the pain threshold of a toddler who bumps her head and then has hysterics. I am pathetically feeble when it comes to physical pain.
The main reason I hardly ever wear heels is because whenever I do my feet hurt and I spend the entire evening thinking about how sore they are rather than actually enjoying my night out.
My pathetic inability to tolerate pain extends to anticipated pain. When I first got my contact lenses twenty years ago, I was so sure that putting the lenses in my eye was doing to hurt (and/or poke my eyeball out) that every time I tried to put them in I would involuntarily close my eyes. I got over that one fairly quickly, but even today, whenever I go to the optician to get my eyes tested I start flinching away as soon as I have to put my chin in that terrifying Clockwork Orange-esque machine. I do all this even though NOTHING IS HURTING ME AT ALL.
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It's ridiculous. I was reminded of my fear of pain this week when I went in to get my eye brows and, yes, upper lip threaded. I think every woman has the right to be as hairy as she likes, and I find the increasing pressure on all of us to be totally bald from the neck down really annoying. But I have given in to social conditioning when it comes to my actual face, and regularly get my eye brows tidied up and remove all hints of my natural faint lady-tache.
Of course, given my innate pathetic-ness, when it comes to hair removal, I would ideally go for the pain free option. But alas, there doesn't seem to be one - waxing is horrible; I went for electrolysis about ten years ago and it hurt so much I had to make her stop after a few minutes because I was about to start crying - and threading doesn't irritate my skin and leave it red and inflamed, so that's what I go for.
Even though it hurts. I mean, it really hurts. I go to an excellent salon off Mary Street, and it's quick and they do a great job, but for a few minutes as that thread moves over my temples making a noise like a little lawn mower, I have to bite my lip to stop myself constantly saying "Ow. Ow. Ow." and making other expressions of pain that would probably annoy the threader so much she'd give me a terrible tadpole brow. So I shut up, but inside I'm wailing.
Sometimes I take a Nurofen Plus before I go in, in the hope that it will dull the pain, but it doesn't seem to be very effective. (Read our thoughts about the ridiculous difficulty of getting this supposedly Over The Counter painkiller). And the thing is, I seem to be the only person in there who's wincing. Everyone else just lies back and calmly lets the threader get on with it. Proof, yet again, that I really am a wuss.
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So what about you? Are you an over-sensitive petal like me? How much are you prepared to suffer for what is, let's face it, isn't really necessary, whether killer heels or hair removal? And come on, isn't the bit where they thread the outer bits of your eyebrows really, really horrible?
