Indian hair removal technique gains popularity in midwest USA
The ancient Indian practice of threading (removing unwanted hair
by twisting a thread around it and pulling) is slowly but surely
spreading throughout the United States. Already a popular treatment
in New York and California, threading is making inroads in the
Midwest, luring women away from salons who only offer waxing for
hair removal.
Roma Thadani is one immigrant capitalizing on the trend. After
arriving in the US in 1998, Thadani made her way to Indianapolis
to start her new life, and was shocked to find no threading parlors
in the city, a marked contrast to India where they spring up on
every corner. Thadani began offering threading for $1 to customers
at her sister-in-law’s India Emporium, but this 44 year-old
businesswoman has come a long way since then. With four locations
and ten employees, Thadani is only one of many South Asian women
to capitalize on this growing trend. In fact, Thadani and her
husband Kumar now plan to add to their empire by opening 3 more
stores in Pennsylvania in the coming year.
Thadani and those like her may just have found the perfect road
to the American dream. In 2004, American consumers spend over
$44 million on tools and makeup for eyebrows alone, and sales
of eyebrow related product have grown by 80 percent since 1997.
The growing popularity of threading in the Midwest is a solid
sign the technique is here to stay; people in this region are
unlikely to jump on and off the style bandwagon, especially as
compared to their counterparts on either coast.
Threading is inexpensive; at $5 to $7 per treatment, it costs
about half the price of waxing and lasts for the same amount of
time. Many customers express a preference for threading because
there are fewer safety concerns- no hot wax near the hyper-sensitive
eye area and no risk of burns from inexpertly applied wax. Threading
is also more likely to remove the finest hairs that tweezing often
leaves behind.
Some proponents of waxing point out that threading is more painful
and takes longer than waxing, which removes all the stray hairs
in one quick tug. Given the average consumers willingness to suffer
for beauty, few experts believe the possibility of additional
pain will have a strong effect on the spread of threading. Though
practitioners like Thadani often have to coax new clients into
the chair at first, consumers are almost always delighted by the
end result, and most become repeat customers. In the words of
an Indianapolis native threading is inexpensive,
no-nonsense, no mess, and a method that works and lasts.
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