Why Threading Is A Precious Ritual For Brown Women 

The first time I had my eyebrows threaded, silent tears streamed down my face and pooled in the hollows of my ears. I gripped the arms of the salon chair in pain as a woman bent over my face, twisting cotton thread across my skin. I could smell her sweet perfume and hear her slow breathing as she worked meticulously away, leaving no stray hair unplucked. I remember the kind smile she exchanged with my mother as I held a hand mirror up to my face, admiring the clean arches of my once-shapeless eyebrows.

“It won’t hurt so bad the next time,” they assured me.

What is threading?

Threading is the act of removing facial hair with a piece of cotton thread that is tied into a circle and looped between the fingers. With a twisting motion, the thread is swept across the skin to pluck hair out from the root. Though it’s been popularized as a brow shaping treatment, threading is used all over the face—including the upper lip—on all genders.

The process dates back to ancient Indian and Middle Eastern practices and has been a fixture of Brown beauty culture for centuries. “Threading pulls the hairs from the roots without damaging the follicle,” explains Kiran Darred, who studied threading in India before opening her own salon, Blink Brow Bar, in Vancouver. “Usually with tweezing or waxing, the follicle can get damaged, and it’s less precise so you can get the wrong [eyebrow] shape.” Hair won’t grow back thicker, assures Darred, and for some, it may actually thin out a bit.

In the past 15 years or so, the west has caught up with the benefits of eyebrow threading. In Canada, luxury threading salons have sprouted up across the country. They join a host of long-standing hole-in-the-wall-type threading spaces, where cash is the preferred method of payment and South Asian aunties thread their patrons with adroit fluidity. These are the small, low-key salons sandwiched between businesses on busy streets, or home salons run out of garages in the suburbs. Bollywood movies may play on a small TV in the corner, Punjabi is often the language of choice and customer service might be limited to a wordless nod. But the end result is almost always bound to be perfect.

While threading has been embraced by people from all cultures, for many Brown women, the process is a rite of passage. It's both a threshold to enter into womanhood—and the regular upkeep that can entail—as well as a link to culture. For those of us who choose to thread, the experience of sitting in a salon chair is ubiquitous. It’s a unique space where we feel an intangible sense of belonging: We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here many times again.

Finding community in the threading salon

For Taslim Jaffer, introducing her daughter to threading was always about more than beauty. Though Jaffer was born in the Ismaili-Indian diaspora in Kenya, her three children were born and raised in British Columbia. “They’re very Canadian,” she says of her kids. “It's a loss that I would grieve if they couldn't feel connected to their roots.” Passing down traditions and customs from her own upbringing has become an important aspect of her parenting process, whether it’s the food they make at home or the clothes they wear. But threading in particular sits at the crossroads of cultural connection and mother-daughter bonding.

When her eldest daughter was 13, Jaffer brought her to a threading spot 10 minutes from their South Surrey home. “I really like taking her there because it's owned by a group of Punjabi women. I like showing her that it's a woman-owned business and it's a Brown woman-owned business,” says Jaffer. “There's usually some Bollywood music playing and everyone calls each other didi [sister] So my daughter picked that up. I told her it means ‘sister’ and she understood the value of that.”

“I love that it’s a very Brown space for my daughter to see,” she says. “Because there aren't a lot of those spaces [in].”

With her daughter now well into her teens, threading has become a ritual. Sometimes her younger nine-year-old daughter joins them. “She knows it's going to be her turn one day,” Jaffer laughs.

Threading culture has an ouroboros-like sense of infinity: Mothers often take their daughters to their first appointments and so on, and so on. Sabah Haque’s mother took her to her first appointment when Haque was in grade 9 and living in Dubai. “It was one of the first things my mother taught me, aside from the basic things,” she recalls. “I felt a very ritualistic connection, a coming of age that was very specific to my culture. I think that was the best version of a mother-daughter exchange.”

When Haque moved to Toronto on her own as a young adult, finding a threading salon was at the top of her list. “I always feel like myself when I've had my eyebrows done,” she says. “The moment you look in the mirror, especially when you go to someone who knows how to thread your type of hair or work with your [face], I feel like it transforms the way I see myself.”

Is threading safe for your skin?

When her mother took her to her first threading appointments as a teen in Surrey, Neelam Gandevia experienced irritation and breakouts over the areas that were treated. “It's never worked for my skin,” says Gandevia, who now opts for a facial razor when she chooses to remove any unwanted hair.

According to Blink Brow’s Darred, threading is still a better option than waxing for sensitive skin types. “Waxing can cause irritation [on] because every time you wax, you’re stripping the sebum oil from the skin. Plus there’s the chance of ripping skin off if someone has sensitive skin,” she says. “But with threading there’s no chance of that. You could get tiny cuts if you have super sensitive skin, but there is no damage at all.” She notes, however, that people on certain medications that make skin thinner might react more to threading.

Most salons will offer a soothing salve of aloe vera after threading to calm any irritation, but it’s a good idea to keep skin bare since the pores are open for a few hours after a threading session. Some salons, such as Moka Spa & Salon in New Brunswick, use a hypoallergenic thread which is safer for very sensitive skin.

Threading, hair removal and femininity

Despite the skin reaction, Gandevia recalls her girlhood threading excursions with her mother with a sense of nostalgia. They frequented a home salon out of a converted garage, which also offered hair appointments. “It was always a nice excuse for us to get away for a little girl time,” she recalls, sharing that occasionally her grandmother would join them. “I always remember my mom getting her face threaded and talking to the lady about their Indian serial [shows]. We’d sit there and chat about the latest beauty trends, like ‘Oh, everyone is draping their sari like this now.’ Being able to talk about beauty in a space that was strictly South Asian, it was always very refreshing. It's just such a core memory of being desi.”

That said, Gandevia does question the culture of hair removal, particularly within South Asian communities. “Are we doing this for ourselves? Or are we doing this for the perception of others?” she asks. “I remember asking my mom, ‘Why does it matter?’ And she's like, ‘Because you won't look clean and tidy.’ I pushed back and she said, ‘Because you look like a man.’ Who says that to their daughter? Why do we [South] have this inherent culture of shaming ourselves and our daughters and passing on this idea [of]”

“I've got nothing against anyone who waxes or threads because it looks gorgeous when it's done. But at the same time, I always wonder about the culture behind it,” she says. “A lot of times, we do body hair and facial hair removal because we're told that it's the right way of doing things or that this is what is attractive and beautiful. And that's not true.”

More than a decade has passed since my first painful threading experience. It has become a part of my life in the most wonderfully mundane way—a part of my routine often lumped in with other errands. But now, there’s nothing quite as familiar as the thwaap-thwaap sound of a cotton thread twisting against my brow bone. Or the gentle sting on my skin as stray hairs are lifted from the root. These days, it doesn’t hurt so much anymore.