assalam aleykum

This blog has been a long time coming. Around age twenty three I started to be increasingly alarmed about the elements of womanhood that no one tells you about, or at least no one told me about. Little black hairs in places where they don't belong. Darkening upper lip. Changes in hair texture. Stretchmarks as prevalent as black stripes on a zebra. Oh yes and is it possible that my hair is getting thicker and curlier in the back while at the same time completely abandoning the hair line above my forehead? Fortunately for you my less than stellar genes have led me into a deep encompassing obsession with beauty products, treatments, spas, laser's, plumpers, and slimmers and I’m here to share the dark and dirty. I have tried everything short of a plastic surgeon and at this rate I'd be willing to bet my twenty-something day spa obsession will bloom into my thirty something plastic surgery obsession. If only I weren't raised by wasps I'd lack my hyperactive self judgment and already be instantly rid of the Pillsbury dough boy belly I’ve had since age 9.

So here I am in the lobby of the W Hotel in San Francisco. I just finished a 75 minute treatment at my Mecca, Bliss. Call me Hajji Laurie for I have reached a new level of spiritual enlightenment. Bliss. I have saved. Pined. Prayed. God please organize my life so that one day I may be graced enough to receive regular treatments at Bliss. Or maybe lucky enough for one.

So when my dear, dear mentor moved to San Francisco on a whim and asked me to drive her car out here I had no idea it was all part of the plan. I had no idea the plan would end in spring water bubbling with fresh-cut strawberry and lemon buoys in the waiting room of bliss San Francisco. But it did. And it makes a great opening for this; my tell-all, behind-the-scenes, nothing left untold, beauty blog. I'll sacrifice my ego, any remnants of self-preservation, and reveal the most embarrassing tidbits of personal information in the name of sisterhood and tearing the cloak off of all that goes unsaid about our bodies and womanhood. I know there are others like me. I know you are out there too. Maybe it wasn’t the darkening of your upper lip that brought you to the door step of your local aesthetician, but I have met you in day spa lobbies from Bali to Boston, and I know that something (errant hair, droopy waddle, whatever…) brought you there. You are the women who, like me, have been infected with some bizarre onslaught of womanhood and although you wish you could embrace and love yourself and possibly even feel sexier with that black hair on your chin - you, like me, find yourself searching for the day spa that will explain, nurture, and remedy that black hair, stretch mark, or love handle and make you feel all the more fabulous just for showing up.


If you live in a major city chances are that spa is Bliss. If you live in a smaller town, as I do, the adventure to find the cheapest, most affective treatments for each unique manifestation of your ever-evolving adulthood is infinitely more cumbersome. My goal is lighten the load. Share information and possibly at the expense of my own ego, entertain. Ok ok enough intros on to post one…