As her hands cautiously ran a thread through a customer’s eyebrows, Sunita Badhe anxiously glanced at her salon door, and the street outside. Then she sighed as she finished with only her fifth customer for the day.  It was 4 p.m. and the salon’s waiting area was empty.

By this time of the day, Badhe would have had at least 15 customers when she started working three years back at the eyebrow threading salon, called Perfect Brows, in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan.

It isn’t the economy that has Badhe worried. At a time when many industries in the U.S. are gasping for breath, threading, a hair removal practice traditionally common in South Asia and the Middle East, is actually growing in popularity with women across the country. But many South Asian and Middle Eastern eyebrow threading salons are struggling because of a challenge that they never had to face till now: competition.

The growing demand for threading is attracting an increasing number of Americans and other, non-Asian immigrants to the trade, eating into what was an exclusive monopoly of the South Asian and Middle Eastern communities. The competition has increased options for customers, lowered prices, and, some customers say, improved the experience of eyebrow threading. But it has also lent a racial undertone to the industry’s future.

Asma Qureishi, who came from Pakistan in 2006, says that she used to make about $6,000 a month in her San Jose, Calif., salon. Now she takes in about half that amount and is struggling to make ends meet.  “If things don’t improve in the next few months, I’ll have to look for something else to do,” she said.

By contrast, since opening her Thread-in-Time salon in East San Jose, Calif., in January 2011, Yolanda Juarez, a Mexican-American, now earns about $4,000 a month. Juarez said that she was attracted to threading after she asked her beautician to try it instead of waxing. “Many of my friends had told me about this ‘lovely’ thing called threading,” She recalled. “I realized it was lovely, but also that there was a growing market.”

Badhe with a customer at her threading salon in northern Manhattan. (Photo by Charu Sudan Kasturi/CNS)

Threading is believed to have originated in South Asia in ancient times, and spread to the Middle East and then to China and South East Asia.

A threading technician holds one end of a cotton thread in her mouth, and loops the other end of the thread around straight lines of hair, pulling them out. The process is repeated in quick, successive movements.

Because an entire line of hair is removed in one go, threading leads to straighter and clearer eyebrow lines than if tweezers are used to pull out individual hairs. It takes less time – about 15 minutes for both eyebrows – than most other hair removal techniques and is cheaper. A threading session, involving eyebrow and upper lip hair removal, costs between $10 and $15, compared to waxing, which costs about $25. Threading also does not involve chemicals.

Proponents of threading argue that it is also less painful than waxing and using tweezers, though critics point to recent studies suggesting that those with sensitive skin may develop ruptures with threading unless it is done by a seasoned practitioner. Citing such health concerns, Texas in 2009 and Arizona in 2011 introduced regulations requiring licenses for threading practitioners. Arizona backtracked after opposition from immigrant groups who argued that threading was unlike other cosmetology practices.

“The advantages of threading have really caught on here in the U.S.,” said Cyrus Bulsara, president of Professional Consultants and Resources, a beauty industry consultancy and analysis firm headquartered in Plano, Texas, which conducts one of the most widely referenced annual surveys of the beauty industry in the country. “The eyebrow threading industry is growing by at least 20 to 25 percent year on year.”

But so is the competition within the industry, Bulsara said.

Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, and Middle Eastern communities still run most salons in the U.S. But in most major hubs of the industry – New York, New Jersey, California, Texas and Ohio – a growing number of training schools are attracting an increasing number of non-Asian students, mostly Americans, Dominicans and Mexicans.

Sandhya Bajaj started her training center, Learn Threading, in Columbus, Ohio, with four students in 2006. Today, she teaches three classes, each with more than 20 students. “There is a massive growth in interest among non-Asians in learning threading,” she said. “For women interested in the beauty industry – cutting across communities – threading today represents one of the sectors they are most likely to find jobs going ahead.”

It turns out that cultural affinity is a crucial factor in how many customers choose their threading salon, often to the disadvantage of South Asians. Sarah Rogers, a student at Baruch College in New York, said she prefers going to a threading salon run by a young American couple in Greenwich Village because of the superior atmosphere.

“I go to a salon for an experience,” Rogers explained. “Being able to communicate with the technician comfortably while listening to good music you relate to is key to that experience.”

Likewise most of Yolanda Juarez’s customers at her salon in East San Jose are Hispanic. They prefer it, Juarez said, because, like them, she speaks Spanish.

Still, in some parts of the country, like Washington D.C., the threat from outside the South Asian community remains negligible. “We have been riding the growth of the industry since we started four years back,” said Sunil Dahiya, an Indian and co-owner of DuPont Threading salon located near DuPont Circle in Washington D.C. “In this city, South Asians really have little competition.”

That is small satisfaction to Sunita Badhe sitting in her too-quiet salon in northern Manhattan. “This was one industry I thought we had to ourselves,” she said, speaking in Hindi, a national language of her native country, India. “I was wrong.”

Email: csk2147@columbia.edu