Don't Sugarcoat it or Anything...

I didn’t think I would be so pleased to have a complete stranger blatantly point out my glaring shortcomings, but in this situation, honesty really was the best policy. This weekend, my family celebrated the wedding of my dear cousin. (Stay tuned for a wedding cake post!) Since I wanted to look snazzy, I went over to the nail salon on Saturday morning to get my toes and fingers pampered. If you can’t wear shiny red nail polish to a holiday wedding, then when can you wear it, for cryin’ out loud?


As I’m sitting in the chair getting my nails polished, the lady looks at me and says: “Your brows look really bad. Much too thick. Makes them look too short. I will fix them for you. They look very bad. Trust me.”

Whoa, there! I didn’t sign up for a brow wax today! In fact, that is a service that I have never been interested in! I do not have a unibrow, so the idea of ripping hairs off of my face with hot wax has never been appealing. Not to mention, I didn’t want to keep adding expenses on to my ever-growing salon tab. (I think they tend to up-sell me pretty heavily at the nail salon. Since I can’t always understand what they are saying, I just smile and politely nod.) But she was so intent on telling me how bad I looked, that I finally relented. She promised it would only cost $10 and a few minutes. “Trust me” she said. “I take care of you. You look better when I finish.”

Well, let me tell you…she was so right! Why had I not had a single friend or loved one come forward to tell me how badly my brows were in need of shaping? What about all of this “sharing the truth in love” business we hear about in church? I hope dear ones, that none of you would let me obliviously walk around with a giant booger dangling from my nose. As much as I was taken aback by the nail tech’s forthrightness, in the end I was relieved by her candor and glad to have an opportunity to rectify a long-overdue beauty oversight.

I tipped her well.