#6: Janet the Bikini Waxer

#6 on our illustrious list of Dartmouth’s most influential people of 2010 is the fierce, feisty, and unspoken secret hero to countless Dartmouth students: Janet from Hanover’s “Youthful Solutions” salon (not to be confused with Crystal at Hilde's, who goes certifiably Xena-Warrior-Princess-with-flypaper on your ass).


Since this publication is fratty as fuck, I don’t expect you to know all the effort that some women on this campus put into their bedroom appearance. Yeah, I’m talking about that bikini waxer who is responsible for the muffs and non-muffs of dozens of girls on this campus without ever getting appropriate recognition. Dudes act like that shit happens magically. Newsflash: it requires the endurance of a painful-in-all-ways twenty-minute session with the most talkative psycho pube-ripper in the Upper Valley. Also, this bitch actually must consider herself the Vagina Whisperer, because she TALKS TO IT. She tries to make friends with it, she tries to smooth-talk it like they’re on a first date. She acts like she wants to set up a dinner date and late-night text with it about her daddy problems. Bitch wants to write it notes in class and fold up the paper all fancy and write “4 UR EYEZ ONLY” and “S.W.A.K.” on the outside and get you to pass it on. She wants to take it on a picnic and feed it nothing but that sugar frosting stuff (you know she sneaks tastes of that shit when she’s alone, like 4-year-old me and playdoh). She shamelessly flirts with it till you feel like maybe you should give them some alone time, and THEN, just when you think she couldn’t get any crazier, she asks you to flip over so she can “get your tailfeathers” (this is a real-life story, and no, it didn’t happen to me. You can trust me because I’m shameless).

She’s a modern-day Betty Friedan (by the way, if you’re a guy, I don’t know why you’re still reading this, but I promise if you took a couple WGST classes you’d 1) learn who that is and 2) get an easy A. Seize opportunities for white male tokenism), revealing to women parts of themselves they didn’t even know were there, and then viciously removing them with all her might. Janet may be your run-of-the-mill worker in hygiene services, but dammit does she give her all to that job! I think she probably spends her evenings practicing her method on her cats while watching Wheel of Fortune.

So here’s to you, Janet, and all the people who go unrecognized for the integral roles they play in our sex lives. Yeah, I’m talking to all those older cousins and naughty fourth-graders out there who first mixed up all their assorted facts they got from typing “sex” into Ask Jeeves and first broke the news to you about the “wet willy down under” and those balloon thingies and something about “dick spit.” I’m talking about the sweatshop workers who toil day and night to make those Egyptian 10,000 threadcount sheets. I’m talking about Barry White and whoever invented the water bed (no I’m not), and all those roommates out there who begrudgingly accept their sexile and sleep on frat couches, and don’t ask questions in the morning about the Tweety Bird thong on top of their hamper. #6 goes to Janet, but know that all of you get a little honorary piece of it too. It takes a village.