Women's Beauty Routines: Maintenance or Masochism?

Who decided that women should suffer for beauty? We're confident and competent, but for some reason, our sensibility flies out the window the moment we tackle our own appearances.

Let's be honest. Pore extractions consist of a well-paid spa worker repeatedly pinching your face hard enough to leave bruises. Fancy lip-plumping glosses feel like bee stings for hours afterward. And almost any service on a spa menu has an at-home-treatment counterpart these days (smear some exfoliant on a suspiciously vibrator-like contraption, and voila! -- the poor woman's microdermabrasion!). But that doesn't mean you should be doing this torturous stuff to yourself. Here, a collection of treatments far too stupid-painful for the smart, realistic girl to waste time and recuperative energy on.

Waxing Pathetic

Do not attempt an at-home Brazilian. One more time. Do not attempt an at-home Brazilian. There are kits now, pretty boxes at Ulta with purple flowers on the front, to attempt this very feat. Some even come with numbing gels and the like. All this means nothing. Use your sticky Sally Hansen wax for your legs, for your bikini line, hell, even for your treasure trail, but do not, under any circumstances, venture farther south.

Several reasons: The first is that it probably will not work. Best-case scenario, the cloth rips off with searing pain, leaving you with a still-hairy area covered in quickly solidifying wax. Worst-case? Your skin rips from the pressure and you end up bleeding profusely. Graphic, I know, but if that's what it takes to stop you, so be it.

Eyebrow waxings are less likely to draw blood, but that doesn't trivialize the ouch factor. My cheat-alarm starts to go off when I hand a lady $20 to spread hot bubbly wax just inches from my eyes. I like shapely brows as much as the next girl, but there is nothing sexy about walking around with two red, puffy, caterpillar-shaped lumps on my face for two or three days. If you use prescription medications like Differin or Retin-A, experts warn that the wax is that much more likely to rip off your sensitive skin. I still don't even trust myself with tweezers, so I'd rather spend my money on a good thread job. Threading, an ancient hair-removal method from Asia and the Middle East, is relatively pain-free and results in pretty, natural-looking brows, minus the red outline. A cotton thread with a loop at the end is dragged along a row of hair, and slight twists pluck as the lasso glides by. Check your yellow pages for a practicing beauty salon near you; prices are generally a little less than a wax-job.

Recipes Gone Wrong

Magazines are always printing recipes one can whip up at home for face masks, hair conditioners, skin-softening bath soaks, etc. Some of them are genuinely useful -- a dab of honey as lip gloss is a longstanding favorite of mine, and beaten egg white indeed makes a nice astringent mask.

But some -- I daresay maybe most -- do not work.

Case in point: an oft-repeated beauty treatment includes cracking an egg on your head and smoothing the drippy innards on your hair. Rinse it out, the writers promise, and you'll have silky, slip-through-your-fingers tresses. What they don't mention is that if you use anything but ice-cold water, you'll end up with egg foo yung clinging to each strand.

Some guidelines to keep in mind when you're considering hitting the kitchen instead of Sephora: Sticking your fingertips into a grapefruit half for ten minutes really will bleach nails of their over-manicured yellow tinge -- but inspect your fingers well, for the grapefruit juice just loves the tiniest hangnail or severed cuticle, and it hurts like a bitch. Oatmeal in the bath will leave a lovely, cement-like ring around your tub. Mashed-up banana will not rinse out of your hair -- ever. And applying lemon juice (an astringent) near the eyes is just asking for searing pain.