Photo by Flickr user fabulousfabs. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Jeffrey Israel reminds us yet again of the covert body-hair fashion imperative hiding in plain sight.
Every morning I wake up with resentment about the fact that I have to shave my damn face. The ideas that grew gnarled and twisted in my mind by the end of the previous day have loosened over night. My mind is fresh and agile and I’m already working on new material silently in the shower. I’m ready to burst through the plastic shower curtain. I’ll do a couple of quick swipes with a towel to dry off, throw on a random pick of clothes, grab my coffee, which was prepared with a timer to be ready and waiting the night before, some cereal, and run over to my computer to pound out a few pages of my book proposal, or conference paper, or whatever.
But noooooooooo. Stop everything. I have to spend the next 8 to 10 minutes lathering up, artfully dodging moles, carving into under-nose crevices, turning the water on and off to rinse the razor. It’s torture. And I resent it.
What if we could spare future generations this grievous time suck? Surely facial hair is no longer necessary for human survival (if it ever was). No future person would be worse off for not being able to grow facial hair, right? Wouldn’t we be doing future people a favor? Wouldn’t we take a huge leap forward in human evolution if we genetically engineered all forthcoming infants to grow no facial hair and to produce descendents who would forevermore likewise be incapable of such growth?
Source: Big Think
Rather than spend more time mentioning how weird it is that we all distinguish "body" hair removal from "facial" hair removal, I'm just going to go ahead and restate, and in doing so re-frame, Israel's question:
If we could genetically eradicate facial body ancillary hair, should we?
Would we?
Would you?
It's a trickier question than you think. At some point in the past our ancestors had considerably more body hair. Were they better off? Were they more attractive? Was it a boon, a bust, or no difference? If they could have gotten their hands on five-blade razors and hot water would they have shaved their foreheads, eyelids, and noses? Would those who did have been admired as looking tidy? Decried for looking "prepubescent?" Sought out for being daring and sexy? Turned to for seeming self-disciplined and clean cut?
On balance I think I probably would change my facial hair. Maybe not to eliminate it altogether. But maybe to change it enough to make it possible to wax it the way we can wax all the rest of our body hair.
But really? I think if we were to spend any time genetically modifying ourselves for fashionable rather than medical reasons I think I'd rather we modified ourselves to not really care one way or the other.
Tags:
Why can't you wax it?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2012-06-25 12:29.Why can't you wax it?
The big problems are that a)
Submitted by figleaf on Mon, 2012-06-25 14:42.The big problems are that a) beard and moustache hair is far thicker and far denser than any other body hair including armpit and pubic hair, b) most men's facial hair doesn't have a single "grain" or direction to pull in. The result is that while some men can indeed wax, particularly if they start at or near puberty (when it's still fine) for a lot of other men there's considerable risk of skin tearing(!!!)
There may, of course, be similar risks for some men and women when waxing armpit, belly, or pubic hair.
A third reason that I hesitate to mention is that, as you'll probably remember from one of those sensory homunculus illustrations that makes it around the internet from time to time, the face and particularly the area around the mouth has more nerve endings than any other part of the body except the hands. Including genitals! With the result that pulling hair from the face, um, activates more nerves than pulling it from the entire rest of the body. I hesitate to mention this because men are always being accused of being wimps. But... at least in this case the deck is a little stacked against us.
Thus making it easier to wax doesn't mean it's impossible to do it now. And some men do. But the question was about genetic engineering and, again if we were going to go there at all then one place to start would be to make it easier.
figleaf
Laser hair removal sounds
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2012-06-25 18:16.Laser hair removal sounds pretty good, albeit slightly less reversible.
You do realize, I hope, that
Submitted by Jericka (not verified) on Tue, 2012-06-26 17:57.You do realize, I hope, that some women grow a certain amount of facial hair, and have even higher pressure to make sure it never shows? Women do wax upper lips. Facial hair removal is not male only.
I have heard that some male persons, because of genetics, do better with waxing than shaving. I have no experience there.
Fortunately my female genetics are such that my unwanted facial hair is mostly pale and not too noticeable....yet. As I grow older I am getting more. Usually I can just tweeze the few dark hairs that have been popping up.
Then, of course, there are all the options of removing socially unacceptable body hair. I hear that guys are getting more pressure this direction than they used to....so, welcome to the club!
"I hear that guys are getting
Submitted by figleaf on Tue, 2012-06-26 19:31."I hear that guys are getting more pressure this direction than they used to..."
Oi! No kidding, Jericka. For all the talk about personal-ad revenue, I'm pretty sure the only thing keeping all the alt-weekly papers afloat are ads for back-hair removal! (You can wax that.)
And yes, definitely, many or even most women have facial hair, particularly as they get older. And yes, there's something really weird about so many people plucking them in order to preserve the idea that nobody has any to pluck. :-P
I've always longed for a
Submitted by Irene (not verified) on Mon, 2012-06-25 15:17.I've always longed for a depilatory that really works, like the ones in Robert Heinlein's novels. (Nair and Neet and all those things seem to take out about every third hair and burn the skin in between, in my experience.) But short of site-specific chemotherapy I think we're out of luck.
Incidentally, I suspect an awful lot of men would have more interest in a cure for baldness.
Pity all The mighty
Submitted by Irene (not verified) on Thu, 2012-06-28 11:37.Pity all
The mighty Caesars
They pulled their whiskers
Out with tweezers
Burma-Shave
My partner would heartily
Submitted by Kaija (not verified) on Tue, 2012-07-24 10:12.My partner would heartily agree with Jeffrey Israel's opinions on shaving. He has very thick, very multidirectional, very fast-growing facial hair AND sensitive skin that tends towards ingrown hairs. Hence, he has a beard...and it's a very nice looking, very soft, very manly beard and I adore it! Nicely groomed facial hair is a great look for many men, and I totally understand why many of them would rather NOT scrape their faces with a razor every damn day :)