Beauty scars prompt crackdown call
Golnaz Bassam-Tabar speaks out after a painful salon visit leaves her face scarred for life.
They say beauty is pain. But when I walked into iCandy Nails & Waxing, Beauty Ponsonby on Friday, I did not think I would leave with a disfigured face. iCandy staff were friendly and I advised them that I could not stay too long and that I had sensitive skin. No problem, they said.
The first alarm bells rang during the procedure as the therapist applied wax that felt far too hot to be going on facial skin. She was rolling the wax up to a millimetre under my eye.
Every time I scrunched my face up as she was about to tear off the wax strip, she’d panic and cry for me to stop, as my eyelashes would dip into the melting, sticky liquid she had applied. I told her she did not need to go so close to the eye but she persisted. I thought she was a professional who knew what she was doing.
Eventually we finished, albeit after much writhing and squirming, and I even gripped her wrist at one point to stop her from tearing the strip off.
In the mirror I saw a few welts under my right eye. At my protests she said it was normal and after a few days and some aloe vera gel it would subside.
It wasn’t until I was back at work and saw myself in the mirror that I was horrified. I had raw, red burn marks on both sides of my face, with a particularly large one running down my chin. My whole face was on fire.
My colleagues insisted that I return and demand a full refund. When I did, all I got, upon insisting, was some aloe vera gel spluttered into an empty plastic eyelash container.
So I wrote a scathing review on their Facebook page and there I saw the litany of bad reviews. Burned faces, bleeding fingers, the works. I shared it on my own page and my page blew up. People were shocked that the salon had not refunded me yet, and failed to offer aftercare.
The owner messaged me on Facebook offering a refund when several people on my page expressed their disgust publicly. The catch was I had to take down my post. I agreed. After all, I wanted my money back.
Now, I am receiving specialist skin therapy to undo their damage. My face looks like it’s been the subject of a butcher knife dance-off.
A simple $25 procedure has resulted in a repair job of several hundred dollars. I am speaking to my lawyer about legal action.
Moral of the story: regulate the beauty industry, and research the people you are letting loose on your face.