Over the last couple of decades, Americans have been grooming more and more. I'm guessing that skimpier outfits led women to remove more hair. After that, vanity likely led us to clean as much hair as possible off our own bodies. Maybe we can thank swimmers, and maybe we can thank porn stars for convincing us that skin is in. Maybe it's an ode to the gods of symmetry, or maybe we think hair holds onto our stink (our greatest and most primordial shame). Anywhom, I'm not above having a first generation American put a tub of wax over a can of Sterno, stir it with a popsicle stick, spread it on a humiliating patch of hirsute real estate and yank with all of her might. My body, perhaps because I've been pouring junk food, booze and shame into it for 31 years, has turned on me and begun growing a tuft of Wookie fur between my shoulder blades. I've committed to manscaping the bejesus out of that spot (and once, operating on a four-beer buzz, waxed my chest), but I'm drawing the line at getting my dangle-down waxed. Writing for Salon.com , Jed Lipinski discusses the brief history of the Brazilian wax , including the short period of time during which men have been going bare down there. As a good Gonzo journalist, Jed undertakes the somewhat painful procedure and has his coin purse deforested. Unfortunately, he only describes the pain ("almost unbearable") and not anything about what he thought of the look or feel of being perfectly bare on his beanbag. Being the first person named Jed to ever have the procedure done, he should have at least road-tested the boys, because there has to be an actual reason to get this done. To date, there are exactly two reasons to get the manzilian: 1) Quid pro quo, and 2) perspective. On the former, women have been getting trimmed, plucked and yanked for a solid generation, and P Diddy —in a weirdly chivalrous epiphany—thinks that what's good for the goose is good for the gander in terms of crotch hair removal. As for the latter point, the tree looks bigger when you mow the grass around it. Frankly, I'm not sure how many women have been tricked into enjoying sex more because a man's ding-dong looks bigger. Whatever the case, it's weird and I don't want any part of it. I had a close buddy in college who Epil-Stop-ed his sack and ended up with a slightly burning, stinky undercarriage rather than a hyper-sensitive bundle of man-grapes. Should dudes try waxing? Any reason why a guy would want to wax rather than trim? Should we encourage men to get kidney stones so they have an inkling what birth is like? Please check out this link from the Good Men Project on how men are becoming like chicks when it comes to fashion and grooming.
