Some things should remain a mystery – is this one of them?

There was a time when a woman’s beauty regime was a mystery to everyone but her, and possibly her hairdresser and beautician. We were advised to remain a glamorous illusion to our partners and the rest of the world. We were assured that if our grooming habits remained a secret, then our relationships would be the better because we wouldn’t be guilty of killing the romance by letting our other-halves know how much effort was required to pluck, wax, shave, bleach, dye, pummel and moisturise ourselves to their vision of perfection.

With this in mind I read an article by Anne Fry in The Daily Mail that made me think. She wrote, “I had gone into my favourite beauty shop to buy a pot of very expensive face cream…Then, through the window, I saw – slap-bang in the middle of the concourse, with hundreds of people milling about her – a middle-aged woman having her facial hair removed in full public view… Such public displays of grooming are an increasingly maddening social phenomenon that blights today’s shopping experience – having to see beauty treatments done in public that, really, should be kept private.”

Thankfully for Anne it was only the woman’s eyebrows that were being attended to, she wasn’t having a full Brazilian performed in the middle of the mall!

How do you feel about grooming becoming such a public procedure? It’s clearly big business: brow bars, wax shops and manicurists are everywhere, so there’s money to be made and it’s obviously something we are happy to pay for, but are we happy to watch procedures being done in the middle of the shopping centre?

Is Anne right should grooming go back behind closed doors, or should we stop being so squeamish about a bit of plucking and waxing and be grateful people are taking care of themselves?