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Ancient technique twists hairs away
By Carey King
Waxing, ripping, bleaching, plucking.
Any woman who’s been on the quest for well-groomed eyebrows knows the meaning of these words from hours of experience in the beauty chair.
So when The Sylva Herald got wind that a new procedure to remove facial hair had arrived in town, that’s exactly where this reporter went: to the beauty chair in the Sunshine Acres home of 32-year-old Shehnaz Adam.
Adam is relatively new to the area. She and her husband, Mark, a pharmacist at Kel-Save, recently moved to Sylva from Murphy with their two sons, 5-year-old Faisal and 4-year-old Ameer. With her she brings knowledge of a technique called threading, an ancient Middle East practice that involves pulling out unwanted hairs by entwining them between the strands of a long, knotted piece of thread.
A twist of two sections of thread crosses Shehnaz Adam’s brow, entwining and plucking hairs along the way. Adam is new to the area and has begun offering a hair removal procedure called “threading” at her home off Skyland Drive. – Herald photo by Carey King
Leaning back in the chair, holding a hand mirror just so, clients can watch Adam get to work. She rolls a long length of 100-percent cotton thread from a spool, then tears it off with her teeth. Quickly and delicately, she grasps the other end with her left hand, then loops the middle of the string through the index and middle fingers of her right hand. The maneuver creates a twist of thread Adam rubs over unwanted eyebrow, upper lip and facial hair in deft, graceful motions.
No needle is involved. A slight ripping sound can be heard as the hairs are pulled out from their follicles in long rows.
Because threading allows Adam to complete large sections quickly, the process is quick. Skin is left a little red, but only a slight pinch can be felt as the hairs twist away.
That’s in contrast, Adam said, to electrolysis, which can burn skin, and to waxing, which removes the top layer of skin when hardened wax is ripped off. Such harsh treatment can break the skin’s collagen and elastin, Adam said, increasing the chance that it will become stretched out and saggy.
“Waxing is just removing. The reason to choose threading is that it’s really more shaping,” Adam said. “With threading, it’s more measurement.”
To gauge the shape brows should be, Adam pulls a section of thread taut, then lines it up from the outside of the nostril to the indention at the inside of the eye, following the line to where it crosses the browline – the point where the eyebrow should start, she said. To demonstrate where brows should end, she takes that same thread and lines it up from the outside of the nostril to the outer corner of the eye, extending it to the brow – any eyebrow past this point should be removed, she said.
To find the arch, she asks her clients to look straight ahead, then runs the line from the nostril across the cornea to the brow.
“I’m very honest,” said Adam, noting that she doesn’t hesitate to tell her customers where their past plucking has gone wrong.
Evidently that hasn’t turned folks away, as Adam makes weekly trips to Murphy and monthly journeys to Hayesville to keep appointments with her old clients.
Depending on hair’s rate of growth, it can take between two and eight weeks to grow back. In the meantime, customers are left with smooth, silky skin.
Called “khite” in Arabic and “fatlah” in Egyptian, threading’s history is unclear. Some claim it began in Turkey, and others, in China, but it’s now a beauty process so regular that in India it’s as basic to girls as learning to braid each other’s hair.
While Adam is Indian – her grandparents emigrated from India to the south African country of Malawi, and her parents from Malawi to the United Kingdom – she learned her skill in beauty school in England.
“Basically, it’s done all over England, and in New York and Atlanta,” Adam said.
Most American cosmetologists are not trained to do the procedure, so threading is generally limited to salons in bigger cities. However, the technique is spreading following features on the Oprah show and “Extreme Makeover.”
“They all want to learn it,” Adam said.
So far, Adam has been advertising her business (called Saints European Skin Care) to students at WCU and to teachers at son Faisal’s Scotts Creek Elementary School.
“One of the ladies said her husband, for once, actually noticed,” Adam said. “Can you believe it?”
For more information, call Adam at 586-6172.
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