A woman's long, curly dark hair might be something to envy -- unless it's growing around her upper lip.

For centuries, unwanted facial hair has plagued men and women alike, and they have tried waxing, tweezing, electrolysis, sugaring and threading to remove it.

Threading? Yes, an age-old technique thought to date to ancient Egypt, popular among women from India, Asia and the Middle East, but not readily available in the United States. Called fatlah in Egyptian, khite in Arabic, the unique craft involves removing hairs from the follicle using manual dexterity and cotton thread.

Jameli Sader, a hair, fashion and modeling consultant, offers the service to his regular clients at Profiles Fashion Image Institute in Solana Beach.

On a recent visit, Janeen Sanchez, a Sader client for more than 10 years, relaxed in the chair and dropped her head back over the edge while he "cleaned up" the area around her eyebrows.

The 29-year-old Vista schoolteacher barely blinked as the thread worked its magic.

"I think this is gentler on the skin," she said, comparing it with other methods of hair removal. "And definitely less trouble."

She laughingly tells the story of a mishap during her pregnancy with her 19-month-old daughter, Sofia. Sanchez said she decided to try having her brows waxed and had "a horrible reaction, kind of like a burn." She ended up in the care of a dermatologist.

Sanchez also recalled her first experience with threading -- she had come to Sader to have her hair cut.

"He said, 'Scoot down, I'm going to do your eyebrows,'" she said. "He asked me and I just let him -- that's his way. He's a character. He entertains you for the 30 minutes you're here."

The root of the matter

The 40-something Sader is a fascinating sight as he takes one end of a length of upholstery thread between his teeth, loops the middle of the thread around two fingers on his right hand, and holds the other end in his left hand. Fingers flitting delicately like a virtuoso musician, he lassoes the stray hairs which, almost too quickly to be seen, are pulled out at the root. The process uses neither chemicals nor heat, and is basically painless. Practitioners say the re-growth is softer. The results can last up to four weeks.

Threading literally outstrips waxing, because it doesn't pull off the top layer of skin in the process; and tweezing, because it quickly covers a larger area.

Sader began his beauty career at age 7, working in his mother's salon back in his homeland of Lebanon. He stood on a stack of three Pepsi-Cola crates to enable him to place rollers along a customer's neckline, he said. At age 9, he began learning the ancient art of threading.

Although the skill is common in several cultures, it's difficult to find a professional practitioner in the United States. Inquiries to officials in Sacramento, an Internet search of North County cities through several professional directories, and use of search engines located only Sader in the area. He's been providing hair services in Solana Beach for about 17 years, he said.

In 1977, Sader moved from Jordan, where his family had fled in 1973 during the war in Lebanon, to Houston, where he eventually owned a chain of hair salons. Driven west by the city's damp climate, he relocated to California in 1987.

"I couldn't take the humidity," he said with pervasive good humor. "I couldn't wear silk shirts, and they were the fashion. So I followed the fashion, I guess."

Sader's resume includes a stint as promotional director for John Robert Powers modeling school and an on-line image consulting service which has attracted clients nationally. A single father, his proudest production is his 13-year-old daughter, Zaina.

Legal knots

Threading recently survived an attack of culture shock that ended in new state legislation. On July 16, the governor signed a bill authored by Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez, D-Norwalk, exempting threading from the state's Barbering and Cosmetology Act. The assemblyman's district includes areas of Orange and Los Angeles counties, and a community called Little India in Artesia, where practitioners had been cited and fined up to $500 per day by the state Department of Consumer Affairs for threading without a license.

"There was no reason for this," Bermudez said. "There is no cosmetology program, course work or licensing exam that tests for threading. There are no cosmetology schools that offer threading. There's no license for it. So how can you practice without a license?"

The technique, which has been featured in fashion magazines such as Vogue, Allure and Essence and is reportedly widely used among celebrities, is noninvasive and "to this day, there has been no documented case of harm from threading," Bemudez said.

Bermudez said he visited salons and saw clients from every culture receiving the service. He said he saw no other recourse but to seek a legislative remedy for the small business owners caught in what amounted to a culture clash,.

"It was a great opportunity for small-business people to participate in the legislative process and seek a reasonable remedy," Bermudez said. "This is the way government should work."

And he added that the bill would ensure that the technique could continue to be passed from generation to generation.

"Isn't it exciting?" he said. "So often our children lose track of some of our greatest cultural identifiers. There's hundreds of threaders throughout the state that are now free to thread."

Assemblymembers Pat Bates, R-73rd District, and Mark Wyland, R-74th District, both voted for the bill's passage.

Service plus

Sader, in the space of time it took to discuss the threading process, had breezily stripped unwanted hair from a male client's cheeks -- "It makes me feel like the Wolfman," the man said -- styled two other men's hair and given two "upside down" haircuts to two female clients.

And all the while he showered the group with health and beauty advice and comic banter.

"It's like all my life I've been doing it," Sader said with a flourish.

For information about threading, contact Sader at (858) 232-0556 or visit the Web site at www.jameli.com.

Contact staff writer Agnes Diggs at (760) 740-3511 or adiggs@nctimes.com.