Some female beauty customs are utterly baffling. Not only do some of these customs make women look down right unnatural (i.e.: those old women who draw eyebrows halfway up their forehead or dye their hair blue), they can range from uncomfortable to downright painful.
I'm not talking about some obscure group in Mongolia or that group in Africa where the women add a ring around their neck each year their husband has been dead, until their neck is so stretched that it can't support itself without the rings. I'm talking about American beauty customs; specifically hair removal.
One method is shaving. While being reasonably safe when using an electric razor, it can be very dangerous while balancing on one foot on the floor of a slippery, cramped shower stall, running a sharp blade up one's leg¥. How about that option that was popular five or six years ago that we don't hear about anymore: the epilady. It must be pleasant to have a bunch of hairs caught in a rotating coil and yanked out, roots and all.
Then there's the ever popular waxing option. Oh, pour hot wax on me, let it harden, then rip it off to sever hair from follicle (If you have to pour anything on me, I'd prefer chocolate sauce. It's much more fun to have removed).
For the masochist in you, there's the slower method of extracting hair: tweezing. Pulling the hairs out one by one, maybe if your lucky the nerve will come out along with the hair. And what about depilatories (even the word is evil sounding. "I summon Astorath, Bael, Nerig, and Depilatories to, well...never mind.)? If they are strong enough to make hair fall out, what type of damage are they doing to the skin? Maybe doctors should make chemotherapy a cosmetic surgery option. Total hair loss in only a few weeks!
There is also the expensive, time consuming process of electrolysis. I know I want my hair to stop growing because I condemned my follicles to the electric chair.
On the up side, shaving causes hair to grow back thicker and darker (bet your mom didn't tell you that, huh ladies?). Yup, you too could be the bearded women with just a little work. Or maybe you really want angora-looking legs by the time you're 30. If you treat it right and eat the right foods you could have a healthy shiny coat in a good twenty years. Forget about mink, au natural is the way to go every time. Ever wondered why prehistoric man was so fury? Yup, Lucy¤ owned stock in Gillette.
¥ I personally know of a friend with a hideous scar on the back of her calf
from where she fell while shaving. Yet, she still shaves her legs...except for
where her scar is, because no hair grows there.
¤ For those of you out there unfamiliar with her, Lucy is the name that was given to the oldest humanoid skeleton found to date. Up until Lucy was found, anthropologists believed that the growth of the brain case was the first evolutionary step of modern man. Lucy proved them wrong, for her brain case was identical in size to her predecessors. However, there was one important evolutionary change Lucy had taken. She walked upright on two legs.
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