Hair

A couple of dates ago I tried to explain something to D -- answering a question of hers about what I think looks good on women's bodies and what doesn't -- and I got so embarrassed and tongue-tied that I couldn't make the words come out. Then I tried to write a post for this blog, and I had a similar trouble. This is frustrating. Someone who talks as much as I do, and who writes at such length about the smallest thing, shouldn't have so much goddamned trouble saying something so bloody simple ... especially not in an anonymous blog, for God's sake! So even though I don't expect it to be of any interest to anybody else, I'm going to force myself to go through with this out of sheer cussedness.

I don't like razors.

I wish women wouldn't apply razors to any parts of their bodies below their necks.

I don't care what other men do. More precisely, I don't shave my body and I think that men who do shave their bodies are damned fools. But it's not a question of sexual attractiveness for me because I don't have the slightest interest in other men's bodies. If they want to be damned fools, I don't give a fuck. It's a free country.

Am I consistent about this? No, of course not. I draw the line at facial hair on women, which I find unspeakably gross. There's a woman in my company's European office with a mustache. I will go out of my way to avoid any meeting where she is also present, because the mustache is so grotesque and distracting. As for men's facial hair, ... well, I shaved my chin clean for many years. Now I have a beard, but it is narrow. I shave around it. So I'm not consistent.

And in all this I have no objection to trimming your hair shorter if it threatens to get in your way, or to be inconvenient. I try to keep my beard around 3/8 of an inch long. The hair on top of my head is thinning, so I keep it short enough that nobody thinks I'm trying for a comb-over. (Comb-overs are pathetic.)

I also recognize that sometimes there are practical necessities which make shaving unavoidable. Back in school I had a good friend who cycled competitively. Every spring when cycling season started, he had to shave his legs because his cycling uniform clung to his skin so tightly that it would rip out any hairs left standing. So he shaved them all off. It was either that or give up cycling. Similarly, I have known women who work in places that mandate panty hose. Naturally they shaved their legs because the alternative was to lose their jobs. OK, it's sad but understandable.


But in the absence of hard necessity, ... goodness, where do I start?

When I see a beautiful woman who has shaved off her body hair, ... well in the first place I know something is missing. It's obviously not there. And I can feel the absence. I want to say that it feels the same as looking at an amputation, but of course that's too extreme. It's not that bad. But still, I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong because something just ain't there where it's s'posed to be.

Besides all that, think about what the hair means. It doesn't grow in until sexual maturity. It starts to fall out in old age, as the body begins to shut down. In other words, on Nature's calendar, hairless people (male or female) are either prepubescent or really old; they are either not yet ready for sex or past it. Put positively, that means that women with body hair are in that sweet spot in between; they are adult, fully sexual, and not yet past it. On Nature's reckoning, body hair means SEX! That's not an advertisement I can ignore.

And finally, if it's good enough for Sophia Loren, where could I possibly get off pretending it's not good enough for me?

I never was able to explain this to D. I wonder if I should cut-and-paste this article into an e-mail for her?