How My Mother Invented a Painless And Everlasting Hair-Removal Cream
By: Dr. Shiza Mumtaz
Tags: Writing, Hair Removal, Satire, Humour, Childhood

HUMOR

How My Mother Invented a Painless And Everlasting Hair-Removal Cream

But she couldn't ever make it again

Photo by Shiny Diamond from Pexels

My mother is a harmless little innocent princess, always has been. Except for maybe one time when she gently and delicately slapped her youngest brother-my maternal uncle- and he, sadly, fainted. Also, when she beat up another uncle of mine(her younger brother but not the one that fainted) to a diluted pulp, while he was hiding from her behind the curtain. Very kind-hearted lady. Back in the day beating younger siblings was considered an extremely beneficial act of kindness. Just like hammering a piece of meat, you know. If any of you cook you’d know that tenderising meat with a mallet helps the spices of any given marinate sink deeper and resultantly enhance the taste. What are younger siblings made up of? Meat. How to make the meat taste really good? Hitting it with a mallet.

This story is however of something other than uses of sibling rivalry. This is, still, one of my mother’s adventures.

In the late ’70s when my mother was a freshie and was newly introduced to the chemistry lab she decided to go on a wild adventure to lighten her skin. She sure was only recently acquainted to a chemistry lab but not to the probing fact that she was darker than the ultimate standards to conventional beauty.

Bleaching creams were already booming in the subcontinent as the fastest and easiest way to get fair. Sadly, my mother was not allowed by her mother to use a bleaching cream but she was constantly told that she needed to be fair in order to be pretty.

Nevertheless, one fine evening my mother’s chemistry teacher introduced the whole class to “hydrogen peroxide” as the main ingredient of bleaching creams. She also revealed that only a suitable cream was required to bleach the peach fuzz and the epidermis.

My mother being the brave soldier, decided to “borrow” the hydrogen peroxide to mix it up with a whitening cream, sold back in the day, with hydrogen peroxide. She took the cream to the school and after school timing, she decided to get on the ultimate pedestal of beauty once and for all. After mixing up the concoction in a petri dish she, intelligibly, decided to test it on her arm, on a small portion around the cubital fossa.

She kept it on for 15 minutes and then washed it away. Her arm hair came out strikingly golden. And that's when the School guard decided to show up. She almost handed herself into the detention-land. Fortunately being a straight-A student and also the daughter of the school’s donor helped her.

After a few days, the bleached hair fell off and never returned. And they have not returned even after four decades.

My mother’s uncle has since then many times brought her the ingredients but, unfortunately, the same results were never achieved. The whitening cream got discontinued. Which according to my brave mother was expired at the time.

Otherwise, I would've probably been one of the richest people in the world and also would've had more than 38 followers.