Live And Let Live. Grow and Let Grow. Something About Kissing.

Oh fuck me, I’ve come over all ranty again.

It’s Movember: the time of year when – first and foremost – the campaign to raise awareness of prostate/testicular cancer¹ gets its biggest slice of the attention-pie all year. That is, after all, what Movember is for, and I hope that actual fundraising takes place, besides all the moustache baby-steps and hirsute guffaws. I’m all for it. Anything that makes a difference; bonds men together; makes people happy and adds fur to faces – those are all boxes to be ticked in my opinion (woo – there’s that word again, Mu’s favourite). After all, I am heavily involved in the Bearding Community and I have seen first-hand the good that Beard Clubs do, not just in raising funds for charities but right down on a personal level. Beards Help Their Brothers.

 

Some lovely Bearded Gentlemen. The Wessex Beardsmen, in fact.

Naturally, SocMed fills up with the usual memes relating to moustache growth; beards; shaving; not shaving; the superior ability of the one faction to ‘get pussy’ compared to the propensity for the other faction to actually have one, or be one, or something equally droll. These are met with laughter and/or derision, depending on the point of view – nay, the OPINION – of the other users. 

A new one this year was along the lines of (um), “She Says She’s Doing No-Shave November – She Better Get Ready For No-‘D’ December”. I’m not posting the meme here, for fuck’s sake, you’ve seen it enough times. I gather the implications are

• ·        that the Girlfriend of the Male in question is planning to stop shaving one or more body areas from which she is habitually inclined to undertake hair removal;

• ·        the Male is repulsed by the prospect of the Girlfriend acquiring a month’s worth of hair growth in said areas;

• ·        the Male proposes, presumably as an intended punishment, withholding sexual intercourse (the “D”, if you will) for the month following

It is unclear whether the Male intends to continue engaging in intimate acts with the Girlfriend during the month of November, nor is it clear whether the Girlfriend will revert to her usual state of depilatory satisfaction in time for the apparent penance of ‘No-D December’.

I am struggling with the logic here. Surely the Male will punish himself twice:

 - firstly, by forcing himself to have to commit acts which, though normally pleasurable, will disgust him (but not her, presumably) because he is having to do them with a lady of a very slightly more hirsute appearance during November;

 - then, for the month following, by which time the Girlfriend has become smooth and therefore, to him, desirable once more, by declining to engage in said acts despite the offending follicles being made bare of their growth in accordance with his preference?

Entirely gratuitous Jimmy Niggles shot. What? My blog...

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Mu, you’re thinking, Stop over-thinking it. It’s just a meme, and not a very good one at that. Well! Clearly I am not the only one to over-think things. ‘Swhat the Internets is for! This meme appeared in a ‘Closed’ Facebook group where, it must be said, nearly² all of the members are of sound mind and sense of humour: warm, kind, tolerant, and always happy to laugh at the ridiculous. The passion which unites us is for The Beard, and we don’t seem to care whether it’s on a man or a lady: all are welcomed with love and respect. It’s great.

However, this meme proved divisive. Debates began. Insults were thrown. True colours showed. Members left. Others laughed. I won’t repeat any of it – it’s all filed under YHTBT³. But it got me thinking about Feminism. Again, not a debate I plan to open, but I will say this: it is possible to be a Feminist and still shave your legs. Not every woman – not every Feminist – sees hair removal as a symptom of male oppression. If you are happy with your reasons for shaving – or for not shaving – great. That’s all you need. I don’t care if your reason is ‘Because my boyfriend prefers it’: if that’s your choice, that’s fine with me.  Why does it even need to be ‘fine with me’? See previous blogs where OPINIONS are concerned! Stop reading! You don’t need to care what I think! I barely give a fuck myself! There are bigger issues to be tackled by the Feminist movement than the choice of body hair removal. But to the men who buy into this ‘No-D December’ nonsense⁴, ask yourselves a couple of questions:

• ·        Do you think women’s body hair is gross because your friends say so?

• ·        Or because you watch a lot of porn?

Photo: Nash.  Meme: Me.

• ·        Or are you so ungrateful that the woman who lies down beside you actually desires you (whatever state you may be in) that you can’t look past a bit of leg stubble or even a hairy armpit?

If your answer is yes to any of these, seriously, grow the fuck up. Grow the fuck up. Body hair is unimportant. What we do with it is unimportant. Don’t use it as a tool for oppression, a symbol of liberation, don’t use it as anything. Shave it; don’t shave it; do with it as it pleases you. Respect the right of others to do with theirs as it pleases them⁵.

You know, though… I got to thinking. Again. If I were a man, yeah,

and I was having sex with a lady, yeah,

and I found she had hairy armpits, yeah,

that would be kind of cool. It would be like finding a little mini-beard in a place I wasn’t expecting.

A mini-beard! Amazing!

Women are beautiful. Men are beautiful.

Do you know what’s really amazing? Kissing. There should be more kissing. There just should.

¹The Movember movement also supports men’s mental health. I approve this warmly. Love. Respect. Kindness. Compassion. Everyone. Women and Men.

²I say Nearly. Clearly one or two of them turned out to be misogynist pricks. Or maybe they were misunderstood; Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged. Thou Shalt Not Be A Keyboard Warrior. And all that shit

³You Had To Be There. That’s where it’s filed

⁴No, I know it’s not really a ‘thing’. But there are people out there who take memes more seriously than they should. For example, I’ve got a thousand words out of doing just that

⁵My own feminine horticultural arrangements remain, however, my business and mine alone. I will not be drawn on this⁶

⁶And no, I don’t mean it’s drawn on. Fuck’s sake. But you know, I do love a footnote