Thursday, March 6, 2014

Hairy bits.


(www.drewdahlman.deviantart.com)

Please believe me when I say that when I got up this morning,
I had no thought to write a blog post 
that was going to mention pubic hair.

Pubic hair in soap no less.

But wandering the supermarket aisles this morning,
my mind wandered,
and the posts about how I miss blogging,
about how sad I am at the passing of Phillip Seymour Hoffman,
about how grumpy/sad/ I am that John Barrowman is coming to Australia
but not to Adelaide,
and the one asking how many other people drive and walk around
and imagine what their neighbourhood would be like post-zombie apocalypse
just evaporated when I started to think about hair.

I have spend the last two years freaking out about the amount of hair
migrating to life in the drain every time I wash my hair.

Mr Boozle has been lamenting his every increasing male pattern baldness for years
but, at the end of the (not-as-much-gender-equality-that-we-would-like) day,
just like grey hair,
it is easier for a man to carry off the thinning hair look than a woman.

Ah, the cycle of life...

We are born, hair on our limbs but maybe no, or little, hair on our heads.

We grow, get hair on our heads.

We get hormonal and there comes the fuzz in our armpits and in our nether regions.

We enjoy a full body of hair for a while,
albeit apparently shaving/ripping off/dyeing a good amount of it 
for the sake of fashion/comfort/heck knows why else.

(My GP friend says that by the time our girls are teens,
they will be fashionably hair-free in the you-know-where.
Hands up if you haven't had a Brazillian?
I am not into pain and I am not into looking like a 
pre-pubescent kid so I haven't been there
and have no interest.

I am not too worried about my pink bits being out and proud 
for necessity of health and in the privacy of a doctor's room.
After 3 pregnancies and natural childbirths, I've lost count of how many people
have eyeballed the area and I are comfy with the idea.
However, someone standing there with hot wax
and no necessity towards my health and life prospects
does not make me want to ask my va-jay-jay to be out and proud)

Anyhow, I digress.

Then we start to lose our head hair.
Well, actually it relocates to the face for older women
and the ear canals and nostrils for older men.

The word hirsute no longer means a hairy chest or back.

Any hair left at this point turns grey and starts to grow at awkward angles.

So through our lives we pluck, we shave,
we wax, we dye...

Human beings are weird, really.
I am not really into makeup
and can often head into summer without breaking open the fake tan lotion
but I don't like hairy armpits.

Parental influence? Teenage peers? Comfort?
The media? Partner's preference?

When do we make that decision
to shave that bit or dye that bit?

My folks are pretty laid back when it comes to most things when I was growing up
but my mum was an oppressive fascist tyrant when it came to her teenage daughter's beauty regime.

(OK, maybe she wasn't quite that bad but I was a teenager at the time
and that's how I remember it)

I was not allowed to get my ears pierced till I was 16.
That I could take with good grace.

Nor tweeze my eyebrows.
Taken with not such good grace
but accepted as I didn't (quite) have a monobrow.

But I wasn't allowed to shave my legs either.

When I was growing up, my mum bought into a lot of those old wives' tales...
sucking lemons will dry up your blood...
break a pin off in your splinter dig and it will go into your bloodstream and kill you...
shaving your legs will make the hair grow back faster and thicker...

(www.flickr.com)

So picture me,
the slightly dumpy, bespectacled, academic brunette nerd,
who may have also had a haircut resembling a mullet,
bleaching her leg hair through high school.

It wasn't enough for me to be dumpy, nerdy and wearing glasses.
I had to give the bullies a bit more fodder.

The only consolation was that my mother insisted on me wearing my school dress
at a hideous, longer length 
so that less of the bleached leg hair was showing.

That and the fact that the girl with the shortest dress in school 
had orange legs from fake tan 
so that diverted some of the attention,
more than the short dress alone attracted.

So I look at my 6 year old daughter
who has daddy's colouring so isn't a brunette
but has hairy legs all the same
and I think about the big decisions...

When will we give her the sex ed talk?
When will her boyfriend be able to sleep over?
When can she shave her legs and tweeze her brows?
When do we discuss pubic hair etiquette?

Mr Boozle and I,
like most partners, I am sure, 
follow the unspoken rule that head hair left on the soap is fine
but pubic hair is not.

Soon we will have 3 teenagers sharing one bathroom,
one shower
and quite possibly one cake of soap.

It does my head in now when the word "mum" is turned into 3 syllables...

"Mu-uuu-ummmmm, I can't find my hat"...
"Mu-uuu-ummmmm, he hit me again"...

But I should enjoy it.
I suspect that I will find that preferable to hearing it turned into 4...

"Mu-uuu-ummmmm, someone left a pube on the soap again.
I'm not touching it.
Can you come and get it off please?
...
...
Mu-uuu-ummmmm?
...
...
Muuu-uuuuu-uuummmmmmm? "

Of course, if my GP friend is correct,
we might not have to worry about it.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best.blog.post.ever!

As a Mum to three teen girls I was nodding along sympathetically. Thankfully (for my girls) I am not as rigid on rules as your Ma. But thankfully (for me) my girls are not anything like the fake tan, waxed up the wazoo (literally) slap on the cake face type of girl that (sadly) seems to be the norm.

Then I got to the bit about aging and old woman hair.... What.the.heck. I am fortybloodythree, have weird chin hair happening, my eyebrows (for criminies sake) have started to grey (and that aint the only body hair that has changed colour) and AT THE SAME TIME, I have had a hormonal outbreak of zits. Make up your mind body, am I old or not? A 43 year old should not have to have pimples!!! Not fair.

I'd type more, but I have to go eyeball all the bars of soap in the house.

bec said...

Bahaha! Your post and beasplace's comment! And here I am thinking that moaning over the amount of dark cat hair I vacuum up in the bathroom is driving me nuts (and the fact I hvae short dark hair like the cat is being ignored!). This is so up my alley right now- a 10yr old girl (who, depsite being blonde and blue eyed, is half Turkish and seems to have the hairy genes) who has school friends ALREADY waxing or shaving their legs. I've naired her underarsm, as one side was blonde fuzz, the other side- VERY noticeable when she had to put the arms up at basketball! It's so hard to not be your own mother and ban it (i was 'banned' too for way too long in high school- my sister didnt even ask and just shaved them one night in bath, and DIDNT EVEN GET INTO TROUBLE! Still annoyed at her ;) ) and at the same time help them develop a healthy body image, that shaving it all isnt necessary. Here's where i'm hoping no one I really know reads your blog comments- I've done the Brazilian (that's all i'll say on that) and the opposire (au natureale) and at the end of the day, as long as it's for yourself and not to 'catch a man' or work in a strip club, who cares? (not that there's anything wrong with that!) I just need to know: when does the nudie run and brown-eying stop? she likes to rile me up, and I have to just shake my head and look away! I had enough of her butt hole when she was in nappies! As long as she only EVER does that at home, i'm happy. Thanks for the as always hilarious read! Oh, and how to stop them on the soap? Pump bottle body wash! With their OWN personal body puff! Easy!

Nikki said...

Oh gawd.... All this in the week where i realised that my 8 year old was turning into a pre-teen and i started thinking about the onset of hormones.... Too much to contemplate!

The good thing about being #7 child in the family, i don't think my mum ever paid attention to my personal grooming and made no rules. She let me find my own way and make my own mistakes where necessary, which is something i think i will do with my girl. There will be greater battles to fight, I'm sure!

Tasha said...

Having had 4 adult kids living with me at one point I have 1 word for you. " Bodywash" solves it all, well except for the ageing hair issues which I shall ignore ;)