BODY HAIR
Corporeal fuzz found primarily in the armpit, leg, facial, chest, back, and genital areas.
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Getting ready for a date once involved little more than a blow-dryer, a razor, and a handful of products that could be found at the drugstore (or the grocery store, if you were one of those mayonnaise-conditioner people). No need to worry about the fact that you were sprouting little rain forests over each eye.
Today, however, a primper's routine might involve spending several hours and more than a few dollars on professional services: eyebrow threading, lip bleaching, armpit waxing, pubic hair removal via lasers-even those little fluffy fellas near the hairline are likely to get pulled. Hairstyles come and go, but there's a big difference between altering a do's look-Ringlets! Bikini! Van Dyke!-and deciding to get rid of the stuff all together.
Being hairy has become like choosing to be fat or not wanting to part with your bulky CRT computer screen-we're obsessed with whittling everything down to the bare minimum so that we can get as close to not existing as possible, if only because it makes our big cars feel roomier, and our post–Pumping Iron pecs all the more visible. Hair just really isn't so necessary, so what good is it? Fuzzy bodies now hint at a kind of shame not felt by those who've epilated in order to show off every curve and crease. Only he with something to hide would wear a sweater at the beach.
The popularity of extreme grooming regimes has led to the wider acceptance of depilation in areas that once would've seemed vain. No longer does the man with a unibrow need either to pluck in secret or resign himself to the fact that he'll have to compensate for unsightly sub-forehead hair with extra personality and vim. Why go through all that effort when there's a perfectly good waxing place on the corner?
The hairlessness vogue is most apparent below the belt, perhaps resulting from attempts to emulate the look of porn stars, without resorting to surgery or a wardrobe of buttless chaps. And yet, the only people among us who are naturally sans pubic hair are also the people who can wear party hats sans irony. Yes, we all want to seem young… but that young? Whatever the reason, pubic hair removal is a custom that, like foot binding, very likely will lead children to permanently affect their bodies. They may never know the mixture of excitement and fear experienced when those kinky hairs first sprout. Laser hair removal can help banish those hairs for good; waxing can also curb the regrowth process. In other words, if you're a twenty-first-century child, you might never catch sight of a little bit of fuzz at the bottom of a bathing suit, or believe that there was a time when it seemed like there could be no relationship in a beauty parlor more feudal and embarrassing than the one between pedicurist and patron. You'll never have tactile proof that your redheaded roommate used your bar of soap.
At Wanda's European Skin Care Center in Manhattan, there is a special menu for children's services, which has a website that advertises "'Virgin' waxing for children eight years old and up who have never shaved before. Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just two to six sessions! Save your child a lifetime of waxing… and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!"