Today as I sat in a work conference and let my thoughts wander from IFRS to this topic, I came up with a variety of things that could spark inspiration for this blog post. I find there are many differences between American women and Chilean women, but I do not find them to be gaping differences, just little things that I have noticed throughout my time here. Most of them relate to girly things (obviously), like beauty, fashion, and “woman topics” if you catch my drift. I could write forever on these topics, and so to be consistent with my post on
Chilean men, I will limit this post to a one pro & one con.
Behind The Times (aka the Con)I would never say that Chile is any sort of fashion & beauty capital. In fact, I’m more likely to say it is the exact opposite. And one of the things that bugs me most about women here is how they “wear” their hair and “put” on their makeup. Let’s take each of these subjects separately because really it is a problem here.
Most Chilean women wear their hair long. And you would think that they would take care of their hair, washing at least every other day, brushing it before leaving the house, even styling it different every once in a while. Ha. Good luck finding any of that. I swear that the majority of women here wash their hair maybe once a week and definitely do not try and style it before leaving the house.* When I was studying at
La Católica, it was disgusting to see how many girls wear their hair greasier than a McDonald’s french fry. And when you can see white pieces of I-don’t-know-what in someone’s hair, dirtiness has gone too far. Another thing with the hair here is that if they do fix their hair, 1. it is the same style every day, and 2. if it is in a ponytail, they put cualquier cantidad (any number) of barrettes all over the place and make their hair look like a rat’s nest. There is no such thing as a smooth, hair-sprayed ponytail...if you see one of these in this country, that girl is a
gringa.
Moving on to the makeup issue, it is one of two extremes for the most part: or they wear absolutely no makeup whatsoever, or they wear it like
Mimi on the Drew Carey show. Ok so in most cases, Mimi is an exaggeration, but really 99% of chilenas have NO idea how to apply makeup. How about inch-thick eyeliner under their eyes and a nasty green cream-based eye shadow (that you know they bought on the streets) on their eyelids. It really just isn’t a pretty picture.
And think about the hair and make-up (or lack thereof) together....eeek!!!
The Modernism the US Lacks (aka the Pro)This is where most men might want to stop reading because we are going to enter in to the realm of “womanly” talk....and no, not about periods just yet (that might be another topic soon), but about depilación (hair removal).
Where as in the States, women are subjected to an everyday razor and shaving cream or products like Nair, the Chilean women have this topic under control with waxing and the
máquinas de tortura (torture machines, which is my nickname for the
electric depilatory devices). There are so many waxing locations here that you really do have to be choosy with the ones you go to, just to make sure you are getting a clean service. But let’s explore this topic a little further...
So, girls around the age of 12 or 13 begin to use the
máquinas de tortura that their mother’s have. Or maybe they receive one as a gift from an aunt,
abuela (grandmother), etc. Now, although I think these little machines are more painful that both of my tattoos, I think starting at an early age wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. Why you may ask? Because just as with waxing, this little device pulls out the hair from its root, achieving the same results as waxing, just a bit more slowly. Each machine has a rotating head with like 6 tweezer-like parts that rotate quickly to pull out the hair. One has to spend much more time going over the same spot in order to get all of the hair, unlike waxing which takes one (maybe two max.) times to remove a good section of hair.
Well, after years or using the
máquina de tortura and waxing, these ladies are left with virtually no hair because they have effectively killed the root that grows hair. Not only that, but when the hair grows back, it at least comes back soft instead of course & stubbly like with a normal razor. It is so UN-popular to shave here, that it is difficult to find women’s razors and even harder to find shaving cream. It is mostly all men’s products.
And waxing here is much cheaper than in the States, which I think is an important “barrier of entry” for
gringas to always wax their legs, bikinis, armpits, etc. Here, you can pay a nice & clean salon $20USD to wax everything I just mentioned. A Brazilian bikini wax is typically around $14-$20USD, more expensive than a simple bikini wax...but it’s nothing compared to the $60 Brazilians in the States.
While I have yet to jump on this waxing and torture machine bandwagon, I definitely like to take advantage of the cheap bikini waxes for the summer season. And I’m thinking about starting with the leg waxings...maybe then one day I’ll also be able to kill all the hair-growing roots and not have to worry about shaving/depilation when I’m like 50! Shout out to the women here who are WAY smarter when it comes to getting rid of body hair that we are!
*Most exceptions to this majority are the professional working women I have seen, but not even all of them fix their hair. They always wear it the same way every. single. freaking. day. BORING![Updated in order to publish links to the other fabulous stories that over a dozen gringas wrote!]LydiaFlorenciaSaraEmilyShannonJessicaHeatherSheabelAbbyAmandaReneeClareKyle
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