I’m sitting on a garish, shredded red sofa inside a barber shop that doubles as a women’s-only threading parlour at the back. I’ve just been handed a drooling baby to look after while I wait to fix my bushy eyebrows, which have seriously grown out over the last three months.
The last time I went to a beauty parlour, I was in Little India, Singapore, under the loving care of my go-to eyebrow connoisseur, Aunty Kamala, who’s been shaping my eyebrows since I was 21.
I first heard about Aunty Kamala from my sister, who shares her name. This connection solidified our relationship when we visited her tiny store together six years ago.
Since then, Aunty Kamala would always ask about the other if we didn’t come as a pair. She’d share stories about her daughter, the gifts her husband gave her that week, or what she was excited to cook that evening. The best part was the soothing eyebrow massage she gave us after finishing her work.
Since moving from Singapore to Barcelona a year ago, I’ve been on the hunt for a similar beauty parlour—a safe space to regain confidence in my looks and connect with someone who feels almost like family.
The best way to find beauty parlours is through word-of-mouth recommendations, but my Catalan friends mostly talk about laser treatments, sugar waxing, and eyebrow tinting offered by multimillion-dollar beauty chains. So, I decided to explore the Raval barrio.
This narrow, crowded, and chaotic neighborhood is home to many South Asian immigrants and is bursting with graffiti, stores spilling over with goods, and gunny sacks of colorful masalas and pungent spices sold by the kilo.
As I wandered past these shops, I paused in front of a storefront that said ‘Punjabi Unisex Salon’. It looked like it might have what I needed.
When I entered, a man with a thick mustache dressed in a maroon salwar kameez was applying shaving cream to another man’s face. Two others were waiting on the sofas, and they all turned to look at me.
Without a word, the mustached man pointed toward the red curtains behind him. I pushed them aside and found a woman holding a spool of thread draped around her neck. She motioned for me to sit and wait.
The familiar smells of ginger, garlic, and pulses filled the tiny parlour. The room was just big enough for two reclining salon chairs, a small fan, and a radio playing Hindi songs. On the right, an opening revealed a staircase leading to a living room where toys were scattered on the floor.
In the parlour, a woman in a niqab lay on one of the chairs, speaking to the threading lady in Hindi through her veil. The owner then told me in Spanish that I’d have to wait at least 20 minutes. I’m used to this.
As I waited, the threading lady pointed at the toddler on the sofa and asked if I could keep an eye on him while she worked on his mother. The baby gargled as his mum took off her headscarf and abaya for her service. She then picked up her baby and plonked him on my lap.
“His name is Abdullah. Just sit with him, okay?” she said in halting English. I agreed, knowing no one else was available to help.
I’ve noticed that parlours also seem to double as spaces for babysitting duties.
Once, when I visited a threading parlour inside someone’s home in the Canary Islands, the customer’s baby was being fed by the daughter of the woman threading my eyebrows. I only realized this dynamic when I asked for the baby’s name. The girl feeding him didn’t know and simply said she was just helping out the lady getting her brows done.
There’s an almost symbiotic dynamic in these spaces, which were often started by women who faced language barriers and bureaucratic struggles. There seems to be an unspoken reciprocity beyond Google ratings and product listings, centered on a common sense of care. The word-of-mouth recommendations also help ensure that potential clients are safe and not spies.
Back in the Punjabi Unisex Salon, the threading lady began her work by tightening the curtains of the parlour to ensure no one could look inside. The woman in the niqab used her fingers to stretch the skin below her eyebrows, while the threading lady deftly moved the thread between her fingers and teeth, all while chatting with her customer in Hindi.
I caught words I’d learned while living in Pakistan, overlapping in Hindi: pati (husband), khana (food), ghar (home). It seemed they were discussing what she’d cooked for lunch and when her husband would return.
Abdullah sat on my lap, completely unbothered by my presence.
In twenty minutes, Abdullah’s mother looked like a fresh bride. Her arms were hairless, and her face was freshly plucked and cleaned of excess hair. She returned to coo at her child and smiled sheepishly as she said, “Muchas gracias, nena, por ayudarme, porque este bebé siempre quiere sentar en alguien.”
I smiled back as she put on her niqab and paid the threading lady in cash. As usual, there was no price list or card payment option.
It was now my turn to get groomed. I sat down and laid back on the reclining leather chair, that the niqabi lady had just sat in.
Without a break, the Punjabi lady begins powdering my eyebrows and upper lip with talcum powder. She deftly extends the thread from her spool, catches it between her fingers in a rectangle shape and places it above my eyebrows.
The next five minutes is a blistering mix of pain and pleasure: the Punjabi lady is neatly pinching stray hairs with the twist of the thread between her hands and neck. In under five minutes, my eyebrows are shaped, sharp and cleaned of excess hair and my eyes are watering.
She proceeds to the do the same over the curve of my upper and lower lip without breaking her thread. Once she’s done, she eyes my skin for any stray hair and applies a paper towel dipped with rose water on my threaded areas.
“Ya, estas limpia!” she tells me.
I thank her, pay and leave with a bounce in my step.
As I step outside the parlour, there is an intermingling of putrid smells from the drains, and shawarama slowly turning on its cone across the street. The Middle Eastern man is routinely shaving off the meat to slather into some pita bread as he wipes his sweat on the sleeve of his shirt.
The irony of ‘being cleaned’ at the beauty parlour misses a beat in the grimy and messy neighbourhood of Raval.
But, as I live through the times of influencers selling me anti-aging creams and Botox treatments through a screen, these threading aunties and threading parlours hidden in the corners of the touristic city of Barcelona neighbourhood stand as a resistance to other kinds of commerce, one that is based on mutual trust and care.
With just a spool of thread, aloe vera and friendly customer service, these threading ladies form an oasis, leaving their patrons feeling lighter and refreshed.
Photos by the author.
