Would You Like to Keep the Strips?

The question hung in the air as if she’d asked if I wanted a receipt. I was laying on a paper-covered bed, half-naked, with a layer of hot wax cooling in places I preferred not to think about. I blinked. I never thought I’d get this question ever–let alone in my supposedly traditional, Islamic country, on some bed under fluorescent light, skin raw and exposed.

“Excuse me?”

The waxing technician looked at me as if I were the strange one. “Some people sell them,” she explained. But she looked like she’d already regretted offering. I wondered what it was about me that gave her the courage. Did I look like I needed the extra cash? Or does she ask this to everyone who comes in?

I was not in some dingy back-alley parlor with one pink leather bed worn at the edges, wondering who did what on it and for how long. I was in a respectable, well-lit salon with clean, white-tiled floors and rows of neatly arranged waxing supplies–a place where women from all walks of life came for their monthly maintenance. It wasn’t the kind of place where you’d expect entrepreneurial advice about selling body parts.

“The hair, ma’am. Some people sell this–it’s a lot of money,” she said.

Of course, I’d never considered the afterlife of a wax strip, let alone the idea that it could have monetary value. Had the waxer really just offered to let me keep the wax strips with my pubic hair on them? Was this a normal thing? I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling.

The question startled me–not because it was invasive or too intimate (I was already half-naked in a fluorescent-lit room), but because it implied that the remnants of my body–pieces I hadn’t given a second thought–had value.

What a bizarre proposition. But then, curiosity got the better of me, and I did what any millennial with a question does: I Googled it.

That’s when I fell down the internet’s cursed rabbit hole, where I learned that, yes, people really do sell pubic hair. Some women make thousands selling their hair, used underwear, and even bath water. Take Amanda Leon, a Brazilian model, who reportedly made £24,000 selling strands of her hair at £79 each and even bath water for £31 per jar. Or Hannah Dawson, who earns around £15,000 per month by selling her pubic and armpit hair online.

These aren’t isolated stories–there are niche markets and entire communities dedicated to buying intimate parts of women’s lives–literally. Some websites even facilitate the sale of used items from adult industry professionals, including lingerie and body hair, to eager buyers. In the darkest corners of the internet, everything, it seems, can be commodified.

And I wondered, should I be selling my pubic hair? Should I take the strips home with me? Maybe. I wasn’t above it–just surprised by the idea that I could.

In fact, through my search I started wondering what else I could be selling. These numbers seemed so compelling. After all, I’m paid for my labor. I’ve worked jobs where I offered my time in exchange for money. Why couldn’t I offer my body too, in some way, for the extra cash?

I stumbled upon a Saudi Arabian influencer’s TikTok where she held two wax strips in her hand as she explained that true empowerment lies in treating your body as a business–to profit from every part of it.
“I sell every part of me,” she said. “That’s true ownership. What’s mine, I profit from.” 

It feels like freedom, for me–an agency I’m reclaiming, especially in our communities. In a lot of GCC societies, where traditional family structures can be restrictive, women like me often have to navigate complicated paths to find personal freedom. In that context, commodifying one’s body can feel like a subversive act–a way to assert control when other avenues of agency are limited.

But not me though, right? I already left my family and took my freedom. I live independently, away from their restrictions and obligations–but also away from the cushy lifestyle my family once offered.

I could use the extra cash.

In a region where family obligations, arranged marriages, and strict cultural norms can feel suffocating, turning the body into profit can feel like a lesser evil–a way to push back against the expectations that box people in.

In another video, the influencer said:
“Your pubes have to be a certain thickness, ya banat. It can’t just be any type. It has to have thinned down and become more wispy like that.”
She held her waxed strip up to show it off.

Great. So mine won’t work–because admittedly I only now, at 29, decided to get my very first wax, and that with certainty will not be as wispy as the ones she showed in the video.
It’ll take at least a few more months before my hair is qualified. Already coming up against hurdles–still half-naked, skin stinging from the fresh pull.

But I started to wonder, was this really a reversal of power, or just a reshuffling of the same structure that’s always valued women for their physicality?

Maybe it’s empowerment–but of a complicated kind. One that still hinges on being seen, consumed, or sold.

If liberation means selling yourself piece by piece, are you really escaping anything–or just swapping one form of confinement for another?

From beauty standards to sex work, from influencers monetizing their looks to even the intimate, personal remnants of our bodies being marketable–there’s this underlying message that no part of us is off-limits. The fact that I could theoretically sell my wax strips is just one example of how normalized this has become.

This isn’t about shame. It’s about how little space there is between empowerment and survival–and how blurry the line gets when you’re trying to live with dignity.
We’re all chained here. I’m giving some part of me away either way.

When I was about to leave the parlor, the wax tech slipped an apology under her breath as I was paying for the service:
“I’m very sorry, ma’am. Please don’t tell anyone I said this.”

Funny–because, at that moment, all I could think was that she should have sold me that information. Or taken my waxed strips and profited from them herself.

I wasn’t sure whether her apology came from fear, shame, or a genuine sense of propriety. Maybe even she felt conflicted about the idea of selling something so personal. And maybe I was projecting my own discomfort onto her. But for a brief moment, I wondered if it had been a moment of solidarity–woman to woman–a kind of secret hustle tip between strangers.

I decided she must give this tip to all the women who come in, like some kind of underground feminist business school that runs on awkwardness and hot wax.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe she only asked me. And maybe that’s the real question:
Why did I feel like I had to justify what part of me is worth something–and to whom?