MISCELLANIEOUS LIST #13: cut that out
5 deep cuts to help you live on the razor's edge
I started shaving in the 6th grade. At that age, the dense peach fuzz on my gangly legs became so unbearably noticeable to me that my mother permitted me to use a disposable pink plastic Gilette razor to get the job done. Far too eager and alone, I climbed onto the double sink vanity in my parents’ master bathroom and folded my legs into a shallow sink (to shower would take too long; we must assume time was of the essence!). The cheap razor waterless-ly scraped away my self-consciousness. It was liberating—so much so that I dry-shaved my entire prepubescent body in that sink, and then, when my (unnamed) younger brother caught wind of the uproar, he too decided to shave his arms.1 Oh, the bliss we felt from baby-soft, hairless skin…until it grew back prickly. With the itch of regrowth began a loathsome, lifelong chore for both of us.2
This chore, interestingly, is sold to women as an intimate, private act. To men, it is a statement to the world, on which grandmothers and strangers alike can (and will) comment. Shaving is not championed as a ceremonious rite of passage for women like it is for men. For men, it’s a common discourse during family meals, closely related to the topic of puberty: “He’ll be shaving any day now!” “Oh God—would you look at that mustache!” “You’d better get upstairs and shave before church!” Beyond the obvious visibility of the razor’s impact on the body of a man compared to a woman’s, for women, it was just before the turn of the 20th century that hairlessness had become the rule. And with a “problem” as, uh, modern as body hair comes modern solutions: disposable razors, electric razors, tweezers, depilatory creams, hot wax, threading, laser hair removal, electrolysis, pills—the list goes on. As for the pro-body hair movement, once it was co-opted by D2C brands like Nair, Fur, Billie, et. al.—with such classically clean art direction—we’re left with suspiciously perfect, neat patches of “acceptable” body hair.
I suppose that, if nothing else, as we’re urged to confine to the cultural status quo regarding our bodies, we should relish the fact that our DIY depilatories no longer contain arsenic (see below).
All that to introduce my miscellanieous list of five (5) razors:
hanlon’s razor, or the adage that one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
occam’s razor, or the idea that the simplest answer is often the best answer.
G*llette fusion 5 men’s razor. (no gods, no sponsors.)
adler’s razor, or the philosophical razor that if an argument can’t be settled by experiment or observation, it’s not worthy of debate.
Meridian electric razor, or the lazy girl’s electric razor (predominantly marketed towards men, smh). it’s dece.
(Don’t) go against the grain,
lanie
feminist KING
to clarify, my brother has since confined the use of the razor to the neck and up. i think