![\"Placeholder\"](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art59\/graphics59\/Zorba-performs-large.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nby Zorba<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\tposted July 1, 2013<\/span><\/h3>\nThe Sunday evening after Rakkasah<\/span> finds me in the shower, painfully removing the five bangles that have adorned my left wrist for the past two weeks. Having despaired of ever finding bangles that would fit my huge wrists, I was delighted to find some on Amazon<\/span> that actually did. Barely. Several dance sisters advised me to use soap or other slippery assistance to enable the bangles to slip over my hands. Employing this trick now, I have to remember not to merely try to fold my hand as small as possible, but to also keep it relaxed as this minimizes the pain. As it is, I will only put the bangles on if I’m going to wear them for at least a week – preferably two – as the price I pay in pain is significant each time they are put on or removed from my left wrist. My right wrist, where I’d really prefer to wear them, is out of the question – its slightly larger size prohibits even these large, three inch diameter (or Indian size 2.16) bangles from going on at all!<\/p>\nThus is the lesson that "Beauty has its price" once again driven home to one who wasn’t raised, conditioned, or expected to ever embrace its seduction. Of course almost any woman can tell of the price to be paid – and a humble thank you goes to the many women, both dancers and non; who have guided, advised, and helped immeasurably my journey through a world few men have traversed.<\/p>\n
Being involved with an art form that is all about beauty, I too feel the need to present myself as best and as beautiful as possible. Beauty costs in time, pain, and money; and as philosophers have pointed out for millennia: its only fleeting.<\/p>\n
As I’m removing the bangles, I inspect my gel-over-acrylic finger nails and find that they will need to be renewed within the next week. My wife of 29 years and I both have a favorite nail salon that we frequent. Painted nails work fine for toenails, but we’re both murder on fingernails so yet another price is paid for this particular beauty item. At least there is minimal pain involved, although the expense is not trivial, and it takes a good two plus hours to accomplish. A relaxing and enjoyable two hours, but two hours nonetheless.<\/p>\n
Speaking of pain, every 3 weeks I mix pleasure and pain by visiting our esthetician – the pain is shaping my unruly eyebrows into some semblance of beauty by plucking and waxing. The pleasure is the facial which follows, unless of course she finds a blackhead on my nose in which case she digs it out with something that feels like a dull tablespoon. The price I pay in time, money, and pain is worth it as my skin no-longer has oily proto-zits and my eyebrows actually look good. It took several appointments for the esthetician to figure out how she could work with what nature gave me and give me the desired, classic arched shape – but she’s a miracle worker!<\/p>\n
![\"Zorba's](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art59\/graphics59\/Zorba-trampstamp.jpg\")
Another price was paid on my 50th birthday, when I decided to join my many tattooed dance sisters with a tattoo of my very own. Leave it to the "stupid male" to go for a tattoo on one of the more painful areas of the body – the lower back. The three black roses with supporting motif were worth the greatest pain I’d ever experienced – but thank Goddess for my Tribal Fusion teacher who showed up to hold my hand for the first hour or so; I wouldn’t have made it through without her! The Lotus flower on the nape of my neck that I added two years later in memory of my father’s passing, was "nothing" by comparison.<\/p>\n
Like most middle aged men, I had problems with an increasingly large belly that no amount of dieting or exercise would really do much to. It just got to be too much – even for “belly” dance! So I had "work done". Expensive, a long recovery time, uncomfortable and painful (but not nearly as painful as that lower back tattoo!), the procedure reduced me back to something "more reasonable", although a lifetime swayback still gives a more rotund appearance than I’d like. Still, enough was gone that I had to have a lovely necklace\/belly drape re-sized down in order to fit correctly again. Thank Goddess the vendor was at Rakkasah!<\/p>\n
One of the side effects of the procedure is that I "lost" my navel piercing, which I had had for about 13 months and which had really just finished healing. The doctor made me remove it for the surgery, and sure enough, 24 hours later when I was able to get back to it, the site had closed. So I get to experience the pain, expense, and another year of healing to re-do it! My pierced ears were done so many years ago now that I seldom give them thought, although there is still the occasional instance of "These earrings are killing me…"!<\/p>\n
The one thing that I can avoid, as a male, is the bra. Still, I know waaaaay more about bras than a guy has any business knowing – and it makes me darn glad I don’t have to contend with them. Every time a dance sister tries on a new costume – everyone gathers around her in a gaggle of clucking hens (me included). The costume is beautiful, the color is perfect, and its just *meant* for her – but the damn bra doesn’t fit. 30 minutes later, it still doesn’t fit but everyone has had their say about the proper way to fix it. None of them work…<\/p>\n
But I’m subject to the rest of the experience. Learning how to do makeup has been, and continues to be, an interesting process. Overall, a pretty (pun intended!) fun experience – some of the disasters I’ve made out of my face are hysterical! I’m still not particularly good at it, but I’m learning and gradually improving – mostly! Once I got it through my thick male skull that makeup life is much better with the proper primers and preps, I’m having a better time of it. "Makeup Geek" and similar YouTube channels are wonderful!<\/p>\n
Like everyone else, as I age my hair has started to turn grey. I have a lot of hair! Not only my mid-back length hair, but 2 colors of facial hair besides. The facial hair is probably the easiest, cheapest, and fastest beauty "line item" I’m currently dealing with: five minutes every couple of weeks with a hair dye product made for the purpose. My head of hair receives a henna treatment about every three months. Not painful, but annoying with a head full of green glop for six hours!<\/p>\n
Is all this worth it? Most men, and many women would say "no". At the end of the day, it is always a personal decision. When I made my stage entrance at Rakkasah with all this maintenance behind me; wearing a beautiful costume, beautiful jewelry, beautiful makeup, and dancing to beautiful music: The Joy ripped out of my being! I felt beautiful, I felt joyous, I felt complete, I felt magical – and most importantly, my audience felt it too. If the dancer doesn’t feel the beauty and the joy, how can s\/he transmit it to the audience? THAT is what its all about, and what makes all the pain, expense, and time totally worth it!<\/p>\n
Resources:<\/h5>\n\n- \n
Author’s bio page<\/a><\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n![\"use](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/graphics\/acommentbox.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHave a comment? Use or comment section at the bottom of this page or Send us a letter!<\/a>
\nCheck the "Letters to the Editor<\/a>" for other possible viewpoints!<\/p>\nReady for more?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\n- 1-3-11<\/span> I am Become Pure, Destroyer of Dreams, the Belly Dance Police<\/a>
Thus is the lesson that "Beauty has its price" once again driven home to one who wasn’t raised, conditioned, or expected to ever embrace its seduction. Of course almost any woman can tell of the price to be paid – and a humble thank you goes to the many women, both dancers and non; who have guided, advised, and helped immeasurably my journey through a world few men have traversed.<\/p>\n
Being involved with an art form that is all about beauty, I too feel the need to present myself as best and as beautiful as possible. Beauty costs in time, pain, and money; and as philosophers have pointed out for millennia: its only fleeting.<\/p>\n
As I’m removing the bangles, I inspect my gel-over-acrylic finger nails and find that they will need to be renewed within the next week. My wife of 29 years and I both have a favorite nail salon that we frequent. Painted nails work fine for toenails, but we’re both murder on fingernails so yet another price is paid for this particular beauty item. At least there is minimal pain involved, although the expense is not trivial, and it takes a good two plus hours to accomplish. A relaxing and enjoyable two hours, but two hours nonetheless.<\/p>\n
Speaking of pain, every 3 weeks I mix pleasure and pain by visiting our esthetician – the pain is shaping my unruly eyebrows into some semblance of beauty by plucking and waxing. The pleasure is the facial which follows, unless of course she finds a blackhead on my nose in which case she digs it out with something that feels like a dull tablespoon. The price I pay in time, money, and pain is worth it as my skin no-longer has oily proto-zits and my eyebrows actually look good. It took several appointments for the esthetician to figure out how she could work with what nature gave me and give me the desired, classic arched shape – but she’s a miracle worker!<\/p>\n
Another price was paid on my 50th birthday, when I decided to join my many tattooed dance sisters with a tattoo of my very own. Leave it to the "stupid male" to go for a tattoo on one of the more painful areas of the body – the lower back. The three black roses with supporting motif were worth the greatest pain I’d ever experienced – but thank Goddess for my Tribal Fusion teacher who showed up to hold my hand for the first hour or so; I wouldn’t have made it through without her! The Lotus flower on the nape of my neck that I added two years later in memory of my father’s passing, was "nothing" by comparison.<\/p>\n
Like most middle aged men, I had problems with an increasingly large belly that no amount of dieting or exercise would really do much to. It just got to be too much – even for “belly” dance! So I had "work done". Expensive, a long recovery time, uncomfortable and painful (but not nearly as painful as that lower back tattoo!), the procedure reduced me back to something "more reasonable", although a lifetime swayback still gives a more rotund appearance than I’d like. Still, enough was gone that I had to have a lovely necklace\/belly drape re-sized down in order to fit correctly again. Thank Goddess the vendor was at Rakkasah!<\/p>\n
One of the side effects of the procedure is that I "lost" my navel piercing, which I had had for about 13 months and which had really just finished healing. The doctor made me remove it for the surgery, and sure enough, 24 hours later when I was able to get back to it, the site had closed. So I get to experience the pain, expense, and another year of healing to re-do it! My pierced ears were done so many years ago now that I seldom give them thought, although there is still the occasional instance of "These earrings are killing me…"!<\/p>\n
The one thing that I can avoid, as a male, is the bra. Still, I know waaaaay more about bras than a guy has any business knowing – and it makes me darn glad I don’t have to contend with them. Every time a dance sister tries on a new costume – everyone gathers around her in a gaggle of clucking hens (me included). The costume is beautiful, the color is perfect, and its just *meant* for her – but the damn bra doesn’t fit. 30 minutes later, it still doesn’t fit but everyone has had their say about the proper way to fix it. None of them work…<\/p>\n
But I’m subject to the rest of the experience. Learning how to do makeup has been, and continues to be, an interesting process. Overall, a pretty (pun intended!) fun experience – some of the disasters I’ve made out of my face are hysterical! I’m still not particularly good at it, but I’m learning and gradually improving – mostly! Once I got it through my thick male skull that makeup life is much better with the proper primers and preps, I’m having a better time of it. "Makeup Geek" and similar YouTube channels are wonderful!<\/p>\n
Like everyone else, as I age my hair has started to turn grey. I have a lot of hair! Not only my mid-back length hair, but 2 colors of facial hair besides. The facial hair is probably the easiest, cheapest, and fastest beauty "line item" I’m currently dealing with: five minutes every couple of weeks with a hair dye product made for the purpose. My head of hair receives a henna treatment about every three months. Not painful, but annoying with a head full of green glop for six hours!<\/p>\n
Is all this worth it? Most men, and many women would say "no". At the end of the day, it is always a personal decision. When I made my stage entrance at Rakkasah with all this maintenance behind me; wearing a beautiful costume, beautiful jewelry, beautiful makeup, and dancing to beautiful music: The Joy ripped out of my being! I felt beautiful, I felt joyous, I felt complete, I felt magical – and most importantly, my audience felt it too. If the dancer doesn’t feel the beauty and the joy, how can s\/he transmit it to the audience? THAT is what its all about, and what makes all the pain, expense, and time totally worth it!<\/p>\n
Resources:<\/h5>\n\n- \n
Author’s bio page<\/a><\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/p>\n
\nHave a comment? Use or comment section at the bottom of this page or Send us a letter!<\/a>
\nCheck the "Letters to the Editor<\/a>" for other possible viewpoints!<\/p>\nReady for more?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\n- 1-3-11<\/span> I am Become Pure, Destroyer of Dreams, the Belly Dance Police<\/a>
Author’s bio page<\/a><\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/p>\n
\nHave a comment? Use or comment section at the bottom of this page or Send us a letter!<\/a>
\nCheck the "Letters to the Editor<\/a>" for other possible viewpoints!<\/p>\nReady for more?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\n- 1-3-11<\/span> I am Become Pure, Destroyer of Dreams, the Belly Dance Police<\/a>
<\/p>\nHave a comment? Use or comment section at the bottom of this page or Send us a letter!<\/a> Ready for more?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \t\t\t<\/p>\n
\nCheck the "Letters to the Editor<\/a>" for other possible viewpoints!<\/p>\n\n