Bert, Tom Selleck, Bigfoot and Me

This could be me:

Or this:



Or, really quite honestly, this:



If it weren't for the constant shaving, tweezing, waxing, plucking I'm quite sure my picture would show up in the tabloids. Fuzzy black and white pictures of me with headlines declaring "Bigfoot Girl Seen At Kroger", "Female Yeti Drives A Minivan" or "Sasquatch Chick Orders Veggie Sub At Subway, Not A Carnivore".

For someone that doesn't have any Mediterranean ancestry or is not kept at a zoo, I sure do have a lot of fur. I'm a Irish lass. A British urchin. I have the pale, almost transparent skin. My hair has reddish undertones. I love fish and chips with malt vinegar, even. As far as I know, there is not one drop of olive oil in my DNA, so why does my body insist on producing so much hair?

I've been painfully aware of it since I was a teenager, when I began plucking my brows....or brow, I guess I should say. Around that time I noticed the fine downy fuzz on my upper lip was starting to get some color too. And my arms. And my fingers? OMG, my toes and feet too? Seriously. It's not bad enough that I was a very late bloomer. (I didn't get boobs until I was senior, really. But when it happened I exploded like a can of biscuits). So flat chested, metal mouth, ape girl. I had a bag packed and ready at all times, should the circus come to fetch me.

I went so far as to go to CVS on my own and buy a vat of body hair bleach. I'm surprised I even made it out of the store without shriveling away in agony. I'm sure I probably bought a million of harmless things with it. You know, I had to cover my shame with a Mt. Dew, some M&Ms, lip gloss, mousse, nail polish, gum, Seventeen magazine. Nothing to see here folks! Just normal teenage consumerism. I found that once I got home, I was too mortified to even use it. I was afraid that people who noticed my 'stache before, would now notice I had altered it, thereby calling MORE attention to it. Oh the teenage mind.

I think back and compare past to present, I know that my body hair problems are more noticeable now than they were then. Really, my arms aren't even that hairy. Nothing abnormal. It was just the magnification of the adolescent mind. Grizzly mountains of fuzzy molehills. I have since learned the art of self deprecating humor (as you can probably tell if you are a frequent reader). If I make fun of myself first and best, then no one can come behind me and sneak attack my ego with backhanded compliments and such. "Oooh Lizz, your beard is coming in much better than mine." No sir. I've already been there with myself. You aren't going to dupe me into a naive "Hey thanks! I just....waaaiiit a minute!" While I like to be better than other people at things, generally, competitive beard growing is not something for which I'd like to be known.

I pluck my eyebrows, and shape them. People ask me all the time who does them. You do them yourself? Aren't you afraid of jacking them up? Bitch please. When you've been plucking for 20 years, you have mad tweezing skillz. Think Edward Tweezerhands. I trust no one but myself with them. However, my mother and husband have both been instructed that if I am in some sort of comatose state that they are to send in someone to take care of my brows every two weeks. And if I wake up and I look like Frida, there will be hell to pay. I digress. So, I do my brows. I wax my own upper lip, the backs of my hands and my fingers. Shave my legs, feet and toes. Then there is the whole lady garden business.

Shave, and I have to shave again the next day. In reality, it's if I shave in the morning I really could use a shave at night too. My shins get 5 o'clock shadows. And shaving the bikini line? What a bloody pain. Literally. It grows back in with in 24 hours with bumps, irritation and the feeling that you have sandpaper in your pants. If I have on the right (or, I guess, wrong) sort of underwear, the stubble is like Velcro and I have to rip my undies off every time I go to the bathroom. Misery.

I've tried waxing, but I'm not good at waxing the Netherlands myself, nor do I have the time and expendable cash to get it done in a salon. I've done this once. My city has plenty of salons with waxing, but only one willing to do brazilians, and NONE skilled at doing brazilians. I was hairless, but also bruised. That's hot.

In my quest to avoid stubble on the lower half of my body, I recently bought an epilator after reading somewhere that "epilators have come a long ways since the 80s" and I found myself cringing, remembering trying out my mom's Epilady when I was a girl. Waxing doesn't bother me. The pain of it doesn't really make me jump out of my skin and claw the ceiling like a cartoon cat. I'm really OK with it. Also, some freaky part of me enjoys the endorphin rush. Same with piercing my ears. So I'm thinking that this epilator, which got great reviews, probably can't be that bad.

Wrong.

So wrong.

So completely, utterly the King of Wrongdom.

It is a handheld torture device. WHY hasn't the U.N. banned this gadget? I guaran-damn-tee you that no man could take it for any length of time and would spill his country's terrorist secrets and confess any impure thoughts he's ever had about the cast of The Golden Girls within a minute. My tattoo on the top of my foot hurt less. I'm dead serious. The arms weren't too bad but the legs, especially around the ankle. Holy Mary. Save me. And....yeah...I went there. My bikini line. I died a little bit that night.

I got it out again last night because my hands were looking a little braidable. Yes. Again. My hatred for body hair far outweighs any pain this thing can cause. Plus I heard that it gets easier with use. Uh. Yeah, WHO writes this shit and what ring of hell are they going to for lying? Much to my dismay, I will continue to use it. I will cuss at it every time. I will hate and loathe and dread it. But it's all in the name smoothness. All in the name of being womanly. All in the name of separating me from a species that throws its own poo.

Pain is beauty. And beauty fucking hurts.