bikini boot camp

The Tuesday before Memorial Day at Impresarios Salon is the beauty equivalent of going to the mall the day after Thanksgiving — sheer insanity. This particular hysteria is thanks in part to the coming Great Exodus of Manhattanites to Suffolk County, New York, or, as it's more commonly known: the Hamptons. Before packing their Mercedes or Range Rovers with weekend bags and sandwiches from Dean & Deluca, New York's elite clamor for a place in the schedule at the city's hottest salon — of a different sort — before the official kickoff of the summer social season. Impresarios' estheticians tend to the unwanted hair of everyone: society women who prefer full bikini waxes; young heiresses and future socialites who like to leave the initials of boyfriends (and sometimes girlfriends) in the most intimate of areas; and celebrities who are scheduled to shoot the cover of Maxim magazine in three days. The steady stream of black town cars on the brick-lined street evokes the feverishness of a movie premiere rather than the lackadaisical vibe of a salon. Tourists staying at the nearby Gansevoort Hotel and a few stray paparazzi circle the block on foot in hopes of spotting one of their favorite stars in front of the meatpacking district's beauty mainstay. It is a cyclone of frantic energy. And unfortunately for Anna Ligano, it's also her first day of work.

"Hello, Ms. Thang? Anna! Pay attention! Hello?" The girl curls her lip, showing off her ultrabright white teeth. She reminds Anna of a young Rosie Perez, about twenty-one, she guesses, with her curly brown hair highlighted blond, and green eyes. She is a loud and proud Puerto Rican, and she would tell anyone who asked. And many who don't.

Anna is visibly overwhelmed. Her inner mind is a reflection of the salon's frenetic pace. She searches her brain for the attractive Latina's name. Though she's spent the last two hours shadowing her, she still keeps forgetting.

"Sorry." Anna winces, and then exclaims, "Kiki!" as she suddenly remembers the fiery Boricua's name. "Sorry, Kiki!" she repeats. Judging by the dark circles under Kiki's eyes, she was out last night and is in no mood to train someone new. If there were a minute to spare, Kiki would have scowled at Anna's paralyzed stupor, but — fortunately for Anna — there are no spare minutes.

Kiki has worked at the salon for only a year, but her arrogance makes it seem like she's been working here since the salon opened its industrial-design doors. For the previous three months Anna's been taking classes part-time and studying for multiple exams to prepare for this day. That she had prior experience and already held her cosmetology license wasn't good enough; she was still required to spend a certain amount of time shadowing another Impresarios employee, per Carolina's strict instructions. Anna had worked hard, and she felt prepared until the cocky twenty-one-year-old standing in front of her made her feel every last minute of her thirty-five years.

"I need you to run to the supply closet and grab more strips, sticks, and toners and meet me back in my room in exactly four minutes."

Anna hears, but she is frozen. The constant ringing of BlackBerries and iPhones, the continuous flow of hip, soothing spa background music — was that Enya or Dido? — drowned out by the sounds of miniature Yorkshire terriers yapping as their owners went to and from the reception area, constitutes a sensory overload. Especially for a woman whose daily stimulation up until now had consisted of watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends with her six-year-old. "Oiteh?" the girl asks.

"Oh, yes, I heard you," Anna answers politely. Anna's Queens upbringing made her fairly fluent in Spanish, and that nearly always caught people off guard. Anna wishes she could pull the family card so she wouldn't have to go through this training, but the reality was that Sofia had to practically beg Carolina to hire their middle sister.

Carolina and Anna's relationship had soured when Anna chose the domestic life over launching their childhood dream of owning their own business. Anna had always been known as the creative one, Carolina the entrepreneur. Anna had dreamed big, too — of working at the salons on Madison Avenue, of everyone wanting an "Anna do." While the pair attended beauty school, Anna got a really sweet college-student model who wanted highlights. Carolina got a really awful middle-aged wannabe society woman who took herself way too seriously, despite going to the beauty school for a freebie cut. Anna's client left the salon with burns on her scalp. Carolina's client, on the other hand, got a gorgeous cut. But she was painfully unhappy with it. When Carolina's client complained to the teacher — "I came in wanting to look like the model in the picture! "— Carolina shot back, "It's a comb, lady, not a magic wand."

Needless to say, their dreams of doing hair were quashed with their grades.

So Anna set her sights a little lower: mani/pedis, and facials sometimes. These she did until she got married. Now her sights were set even lower: she was going to be doing "bikini-cials," as her fifteen-year-old daughter Fabiana called them. Anna looked confused, until Fabiana explained: "Mom, it's a facial for the whoha."

Back at the salon, Anna was getting a makeover of her own — a "make-under" to be precise.

"Oh, and fix your smock," Kiki says in a condescending tone. Anna looks down at her bland robe and tugs at the sides in an attempt to make it lie flat against her body. Unfortunately, medium was the only size left in the stockroom and Anna teetered on the line between large and extra large. In her beige robe, Anna looked like a giant hamburger stuffed between two miniature buns. And she felt like one, too. The clientele at Impresarios are fast, fashionable, and fierce. Anna had not had these adjectives attached to her — ever.

Kiki quickly disappears into one of the salon's many cavernous hallways while Anna stands in the center of reception, her head spinning.

Anna takes a deep breath, and speaks her new mantra, "Each breath I inhale fills my body with strength and power." She learned it in therapy and was trying it on for size. She pokes a passing Impresarios employee and asks where the supply room is located.

"Down the hall, first door on the left," Renata, a fiftyish Hungarian woman responds in a loud, curt voice before disappearing into a treatment room. Anna quickly moves to the cramped supply room and swings open the door. She grabs a few toners, a couple of cans of wax, waxing strips, and a bundle of stirrers off the methodically organized shelf and throws them in a small pushcart, a jolly trolley, as the staff calls it. In this makeshift trolley rest the essential ingredients for providing the best bikini wax humanly possible, which results in merriment for all: the client, the esthetician, and the client's...