Mmmmmm, body hair.

I've never gone gaga over a guy simply because of his perfect tresses, like I might over a perfectly sculpted abdomen or a sinfully sumptuous intellect. I've certainly never said, "Damn, the way his chest hair curls just so. Could anything be more divine?" But I have done the contrary: I've been physically turned off by receding hairlines and men whose neck hair crawls over the back of their shirt collars. Might these men be otherwise dashing? Perhaps. Might their over-zealous shoulder fur be covering up a warm heart and million-dollar personality? It’s possible. I'm not proud of it, but still the reality exists: body hair can't make you, but it certainly can break you.

While I sympathize with the argument that Nair commercials and Austin Powers have made us believe body hair is far more disgusting than it actually is, I contend some of the repulsion is instinctual: back in the day, cavewomen who looked like men and cavemen who looked like apes got a lot less ass, and this continued until all the super hairy homo erectus were Darwined right into extinction, leaving behind the far less but still too hairy h. sapien.

Nevertheless, somewhere along the line, let’s say during the Reagan years, the cosmetics industry took our dislike of body hair and drove it right into the Land of the Absurd. If you live in a world where it seems perfectly rational to attack your own body with razor blades, hot wax, dyes, poisons, and laser beams – and to pay good money to do so – it’s perhaps time to sit back and recognize just how truly insane we all are. Which is why, although I totally buy into the “Back hair –yech!” movement, I also find my own superficiality as appalling as chest hair that literally pokes through T-shirt fabric like little, black, rabid tentacles (how does it DO that?!?).

And so the hypocrisy remains that while body hair turns me off like a downed power line, I'm rather anti doing anything about it. In fact, guys who wax give me the heebies even more than guys who should and don't. (As a general rule, I prefer men who primp less than I do, which pretty much means they’re allowed to roll out of bed and shower - but no more than five times a week.) A likeminded soul recently described a guy she was desperately attracted to as "so hot: he was in need of a shave, and you could tell he wore that same shirt yesterday." And since this makes perfect sense to me, I realize that what I'm looking for (aesthetically speaking) is some guy who's good looking, but doesn't try, and is also completely unaware of his hotness. Such accidental dreamboats are both extremely rare and extremely difficult to nab; for the most part, they seem to find each other among the wreckage (the rest of us) and settle down, thus leading gorgeous and ignorantly blissful lives, running ten miles a day for fun and never getting cancer.

But besides the primp factor, I'm simply against spending oodles of money on unnecessary cosmetic procedures and products. In fact, three years ago I vowed to henceforth never get a manicure/salon treatment without simultaneously donating an equal sum of money to charity. The vow was prompted by the fact that I only ever got manicures when I visited New York City, which was also the only time I encountered and refused to give money to masses of homeless people, and the whole "No I will not give you fifty cents so you can eat and one day maybe rejoin society as a functioning individual"/"Oh, yes, here's my twenty-five dollars for 0.3 ounces of paint spread upon 1 square inch of surface that will last 1.2 weeks before it will grow out, chip, and look crappy" didn't sit well with me. Of course, since that vow, every hypothetical manicure has cost me upwards of $40, which has reduced my manicure per year rate from 0.75 to 0.0. But even putting my own financial woes aside, as well as all well-thought, tempered, and reasoned argument, the cosmetics industry is an evil, evil empire that fuels and is fueled by eating disorders and teenage insecurity and is also the sole entity responsible for nightmares and Tyra Banks. So I try to stay away.

Also, waxing scares the bajesus out of me.

Despite the yuck-factor, it's true that many of the men I've loved in my life have been hairy, hairy beasts. My step dad was one of those unfortunate creatures who could weave a toupee out of his ear and nose hair, but was elsewise completely bald. When it came to body hair, life dealt him a harsh hand of ironic. It's different of course when you're talking about a person you'd potentially like to see naked, but yes, I have sweat a hairy boy or two, and yes I did want to see him naked.

There's a finely tuned thought-process hierarchy at work that, at least for women, goes heart, libido, head. (As for men, your brain functions allude me completely.) When a woman first meets someone who’s really awesome, but has gorilla arms, her head says, “Oh, he’s really awesome,” but her libido says, “He’s got gorilla arms.” And since she's yet to create any real emotional connection, her heart’s got nothing – at which point, libido wins all. But, if she gets to know someone, say, at work, and suddenly she realizes she's in love with him, her head could say, “Bad idea; we work together,” and her libido might be whining about his trucker stache or man boobs, but both are quickly ruled out by her heart gushing something about loving him more than [insert favorite dessert]. This is how women work. In any event, the head gets the short end of the stick every time.

So yes, we are all (men and women alike) superficial, brainwashed idiots who likely don't measure up to our own impossible standards, but there's hope. I imagine that when I’m truly in love, my man could have two noses (that's right, two noses!), and I wouldn’t care. Or, maybe he'll turn out to be a habitual waxer. Or maybe he'll shower eight times a week, and change his clothes every day, and I'll just have to deal, dammit. See, we all have to make compromises. Nasty ass body hair is reason enough not to be into someone, sure; but it’s never reason enough not to love someone.

Another reason to love wikipedia

The following article is a great read for aliens plotting to conquer earth who may need to brush up on their Human 101. If you're not an alien, it's more like reading about your astrological sign for the very first time, when all the pieces fit together and you realize just how much you really are a Pisces(!!).


Humans, or human beings, are bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man") in the family Hominidae (the great apes). Humans have a highly developed brain capable of abstract reasoning, language, and introspection. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees their upper limbs for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other species. Humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, but they now inhabit every continent, with a total population of over 6.6 billion as of 2007.

Like most primates, humans are social by nature; however, humans are particularly adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization. Humans create complex social structures composed of cooperating and competing groups, ranging in scale from small families and partnerships to species-wide political, scientific and economic unions. Social interactions between humans have also established an extremely wide variety of traditions, rituals, ethics, values, social norms, and laws which form the basis of human society. Humans also have a marked appreciation for beauty and aesthetics which, combined with the human desire for self-expression, has led to cultural innovations such as art, literature and music.

Humans are also noted for their desire to understand and influence the world around them, seeking to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills; humans are the only known species to build fires, cook their food, clothe themselves, and use numerous other technologies....

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If you still need a reason to love wikipedia, there's also the fact that it contains some rather indispensible information like the following photo and caption...





Squilliam Fancyson – fictional character from SpongeBob SquarePants is endowed with a unibrow.






... as well as a list entitled Famous People with Unibrows, which includes: Jim Adkins, Adam Carolla, Jennifer Connelly, Colin Farrell, Oasis band members and brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, Josh Hartnett, Salma Hayek, Matisyahu, Matthew McConaughey [really?], Jack Osbourne, Frank Zappa, Rudolf Hess (Deputy-Führer of Nazi Germany), John Kerry, Pete Sampras, Frida Kahlo, and Oscar the Grouch...

Fabulous.