Shaving

I am not quite ready to become an 'Au natural' kind of woman just yet.

But days like this certainly make me reevaluate my position on shaving my legs.

Although I have literally decades of experience in this particular event, I cannot seem to manage the effort without a bloodletting of at least minor proportion.

I have tried a variety of creams and lotions and potions for this ministration of beauty. The results vary from so-so to gee whiz. And for some unknown reason, even the products that require no shaving at all manage to leave my legs looking like I have gone a few rounds with a wildebeest who had just rolled in poison ivy.

Fully conscious of the fact that other women don't seem to suffer these particular burdens, I am left to wonder exactly how they manage the feat. The only conclusion I am left with in my ponderings is that somehow the wonders and joys of smooth and silky legs is a mystery that requires a password which I simply do not possess.

A friend of mine suggested a product that went along ripping out the hairs electronically. Having had my eyebrows waxed from time to time just to prevent the 'Donald Penobscot' look, I cannot imagine applying either electrical or wax coated means to do my entire leg. Like Mel Gibson's character in the movie 'What Women Want', I have to wonder why, upon having completed the action for one leg, any sane person would go back and do the other one!

My sister Kari says they have people who not only come in for eyebrows and other assorted facial waxing but also seek to have legs, underarms and backs waxed for that oh so smooth and hair free look. It is not like I don't think it will work for me. It is more on the lines of 'OOOOOOOO WEEEEEEEEEE' and 'OOOOOOUUUUUCCCCCCHHHHHHH!" combined with possible swearing that I am concerned with in this little adventure.

While I might be able to bite the bullet and tolerate part of the event for one or even two legs, I know I am simply too much of a weenie to ever have my underarms waxed.

The question I am left with at this point is this: at what point in the alleged evolutionary scale did we decide that shaving was an essential to life? It's not like I think that looking like a hairy caveman/ape is a good idea, but I now realize that a significant portion of our routine for grooming for success and possible social activities requires the application of some sort of hair removal process.

If we are to believe what we have been taught in school, then the Darwinian logic flows backwards too. At one time, hairy women were considered sexy. After all, there would have been no survival of the fittest without someone breeding with those hapless, hairy chicks who could work wonders with that haunch of mammoth over a slow burning fire.

And I am less inclined to believe the hair mattered when it came time for supper. Whoever said the way to a man's heart was through his stomach made a leap of evolutionary logic that stands to this day. Men are willing to put up with virtually anything as long as dinner is on the table and it tastes reasonably good.

I have toured museums all over the parts of the North American continent which I have been blessed to see. In virtually all of them, there is some primitive exhibit that shows the hairy nuclear family of days gone by. The man is aptly demonstrated to be the breadwinner and skilled hunter by the presence of a spear or atlatl in his hand. He is certainly no prize winner when it comes to his looks.

Pronounced ridges over both eyes and deep set eye sockets combine with enough hair to weave into a sizable living room rug set this man apart as an 'alpha male'. Near him, usually depicted near a fire which has little glowing coals that are illuminated by a concealed flickering 40 watt bulb, is the little woman.

She would make the folks at Epilady run screaming into the night.

But he thinks she's sexy. The random hairy kids shown in the diorama prove it.

For at least 5 minutes on a cold night in the sub arctic of the New World which has yet to be discovered that hairy man with his less intelligent looking forehead and that hairy woman with the unibrow came together in a moment or two of splendor in the grass. . . or snow.

The point is, they didn't see the need to shave. Ever. And, according to Darwinian truth, from their generations of begetting sprang all of us who are obsessed with exfoliating and depilatory activities.

Something got lost in translation here.

Well, the time is ticking and I need to keep making myself look nice for church. I don't want anyone to accuse me of espousing that cave man ideal of beauty. At least, not today.