Want to know the secret to a New York woman’s heart?
Try her waxer.
“I look at mine as a mother without the baggage,” says 24-year-old Maria Baker, a writer from Brooklyn. “I tell her that I love her and that she’s wonderful,” says 36-year-old Shakti Shukla, a Flatiron marketing and p.r. consultant. “I seem to tell her about things going on in my love life before I tell anyone else,” says Upper East Side entrepreneur Jill Frechtman, 30.
Despite costs ranging from $26 (J’aime Day Spa) to $75 (J Sisters)for the monthly 20-minute treatment, many a New York woman is willing to endure what may be the second most painful procedure next to childbirth — the Brazilian — because the person wielding the hot wax also holds a small place in her heart.
Janea Padilha, a beautician from a small southeastern town in Brazil, started the trend of extreme waxing in NYC (and extreme closeness to one’s waxer) when she opened her J Sisters salon in Midtown in 1987. Padilha’s impact on clients is legendary — Gwyneth Paltrow, in fact, has a head shot hanging in the salon which screams “You changed my life!” The actress even invited Padilha to her wedding.
“I’ve gotten a thousand wedding invitations,” admits Padilha, whose new book, “Brazilian Sexy” is out this month, proving the intense client-waxer bond is still going strong. “They say, ‘I’m so happy! Come to my wedding!’ I never go — because I don’t have time.”
Not one for modesty, Padilha admits that she changed Paltrow’s look — and her life.
“She used to be head-down shy, and you can see how beautiful she is. I said to her, ‘You have to know what you have inside, because outside you know how beautiful you are. Put your nose up. Put your head up. And I think this made a big difference to her to change her life.’ ”
One of Padilha’s most loyal clients, Ronda Bogart, an interior designer and writer, used to travel 21/2 hours from Pennsylvania for her appointments, even though she usually leaves sweating from the pain of the treatment. Bogart says she used to lie about seeing Padilha.
“People would always ask, ‘What do you do in the city?’ And, because I was always slightly embarrassed to say I’d made a whirlwind visit . . . I’d tell them about the great galleries I visited,” she confesses.
Shukla says she went through several aestheticians before finding her perfect waxer, Ingrid Tsung, at Christine Chin Spa on the Lower East Side whose price is $55. She says Tsung has “the skills of a surgeon” and the “compassion of a therapist.” Believe it or not, it was Tsung who actually helped Shukla when a doctor could not.
“I had an ingrown hair on my bikini line,” Shukla remembers. After seeing another waxer and a doctor, the follicle grew swollen, painful and unsightly — but the first physician she saw lanced it mistakenly, charging $442 and leaving Shukla more frustrated than ever. It was only Tsung who extracted a 4-centimeter-long hair growing under the skin, and Shukla healed right away. “I left the spa so grateful for her compassion and skill,” Shukla says.
Even when it’s not a medical concern, the relationship is one of complete intensity, women say.
“She’s a bit like a second mom, always giving advice and asking how things are with my business and love life,” says entrepreneur Frechtman, founder of Fretzels, a specialty pretzel design company, who adores Natasha Glazman at J’aime Day Spa on the Upper East Side. “I’ve been seeing Natasha on a regular basis for about eight years now. In that time you build a relationship.”
You also build trust. Most women we spoke to said it actually feels as if they are “unfaithful” if they go to a different waxer. “Absolutely like cheating,” says Kia Lee, 25, a singer, dancer and “recession receptionist,” who pays Rachele Facchini $57 for the service at the Skin Spa in Midtown. “I actually haven’t seen anyone else since I have started with Rachele in fear they will mess me up and I will have to explain myself to her!”
Before she found her dream waxer, Lee says she was juggling two to three different people, and like dating multiple guys, it was just too much. Happily enough, it was her waxer who also taught her about the power of sisterhood.
“Meeting her made me realize how two women, complete strangers, can be nice to each other without all the catty drama,” she says. “Granted, you should never be rude to anyone ripping hair off your body.”
mstadtmiller@nypost.com