Friday, March 12, 2010

Grooming, Part One

Extraneous Hair. Let’s start with the stuff we can agree on. Extraneous hair is just that. Extraneous. Get rid of it. First, of course, you have to notice it. Check yourself out in the mirror. Nose hairs that stick out, hair growing out of your ear or moles, hair on the top of your nose and long hairs creeping out of your eyebrows like alien feelers: these all need to go. And no unibrows, please. Plucking, cutting, shaving and electrolysis are all viable options.

With the exception of getting rid of your back hair, this will add about 60 seconds to your day (and maybe not even every day).

Facial Hair. You may be very attached to having a full beard and, if that’s your thing, so be it. And there are plenty of women out there who prefer a man with a beard. Most of them are my mother’s age. However, an un-groomed beard is not attractive to any woman. To what do I refer? Case in point: the neck beard. Your beard hairs should not be sprouting anywhere past the underside of your chin. And if the underside of your chin is not parallel to the floor (i.e, you’re getting a double chin), your beard should not grow past your jawbone. And no facial hair on your cheekbones. Nor should you be able to suck on your mustache hairs. Even writing that makes me nauseous. And I would encourage you to try, just as an experiment, not having a beard or mustache and see if you like it. You can always grow it back.

A final word on facial hair. Some men do look better with facial hair--because they have a baby face, a weak chin, or it happens to be the style at the time and everyone has been brainwashed into thinking a goatee looks cool (which, okay, it does on some men). But let me put a word in for the women who enjoy oral sex. And that word would be “shave.”

The Hair on Your Head. On the long hair: mostly, NO. At least try cutting it. Like facial hair, it will grow back. Professional hair stylists really do know what they’re doing, so quit arguing and let them do what they suggest. Go to a salon and not the five-dollar barber you drive twenty miles out of your way to go to because he’s cheap.

On Tuesday: Grooming, Part Two

3 comments:

  1. It may be worth making an aside about oral sex as a reason to shave facial hair, that being if you want her to go down on you—and yes, you do—then you should be willing to do the same for her. If you're saying "well I don't want to do that, so I don't need to shave my beard," you're making a mistake.

    And segueing from that, what's your opinion on men grooming their crotch hair—leave it natural, trim it, or shave? Perhaps you're addressing that in part two...

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  2. I was going to write more about this in the the segments about sex, but will say a bit about this now. Largely, manscaping in the nether regions is a matter of personal opinion as it's (mostly) a cosmetic thing. Most of the women I've discussed this with don't seem to care one way or the other--with one exception: testicles. A woman will be much more interested in and will spend more time and attention on a man's testicles if they are hair free, so if that's a highly erogenous zone for you, consider shaving.

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  3. There is more to say on this hair issue (e.g., advantages of skin-to-skin contact, grow-out problems) and I'll write about these when we get into talking about sex.

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