June 6–13, 1996

ultimate summer fun

Crossing The Bikini Line

One woman's journey down a long, stubbly path.

By Remi Newman

Okay, like it's summertime, babes and boys, and it's time to show off that hot bod.

But wait a minute, hon. You've really let yourself go this winter. You know what I'm talking about.

That unsightly body hair.

The girls on Cosmo don't have it. Why do you?

You don't have time, you say? Waxing hurts and Nair stinks? Listen up, it could be worse.

According to an article in Mademoiselle, a veritable beauty authority, back in 4000 BC, Egyptian women used depilatories made of starch, arsenic and quicklime. That's rat poison and cement. Ouch.

And around 1500 BC, there were all kinds of really gross recipes for hair removal. Shell of the tortoise with the fat of the hippopotamus — completely gross. Another one called for the blood of oxen, asses, pigs, hounds and goats. Totally yuck. And by the 1700s American women were using caustic lye to burn away hair. Pure torture.

So, don't you start whining about a bit of hot wax. I mean it's not like anyone's asking you to smear goat blood on your bikini line.

You've come a long way, baby. Why, in 1975 women got their very own razor, Gillette's Daisy, and now there are like millions of hair removal products we can spend our billions of dollars on. How cool.

But I didn't always think it was so cool. Once I stopped shaving my legs for a couple of years, and my family was totally grossed out. My grandparents even threatened to do the dirty deed themselves. Grandpa was going to keep me pinned, and grandma was gonna shave me. Kinky.

I said, "Look Grandma, lay off! People have hair on their bodies and just because one day someone decided that men should keep theirs and women shouldn't, what does that have to do with me?"

Yeah, well, I later realized it wasn't so much the hair they feared, it was the meaning behind it. They were freaked I was gonna start bumpin' bushes. You know, turning lesbian. And guess what — they were right.

But now I'm dating a man and I've gone back to the hair removal thing. And so far it's alright. I don't do under my arms, though. No way. Underarm hair is totally sexy.

So, as you can see, I've been through a lot of inner turmoil over this hair thing. To shave or not to shave — it's a really big thing in my life. So I thought I'd get some different perspectives on the issue.

Like I know this guy Troy and he's really funny and he's from Kentucky and dude, Kentucky is like really scary and it's practically like another country. So I said, "Troy, what do you think about body hair removal? I mean should we be like the girls in Cosmo or should we just say fuck it?"

Troy said the only hair that should be removed from a human's body solely for aesthetic reasons is the hair covering the erogenous zones. He said if you want to accentuate certain parts of your body, hair destroys the definition. He said that's why gay men are so prone to shaving their pubes.

"They want to accentuate what they've got for what it's worth. So you just see dick. I don't wanna see a big ol' bag of hair."

Then Troy got really riled up.

"Diversity rules! Revolution is the key to success! Shave Hillary's cooch!"

"Do you think Bill would like that?" I asked.

"I think the nation would like that!"

"Really?"

"Yes, if Hillary were a little more perved out. If she would stop bowing to those bitches on Capitol Hill and say something like 'Cooch Rules!' then D'Amato would shut the fuck up."

"Troy," I said, "that is great insight. But do you know how to spell 'cooch'?"

Next I conferred with my pal Kimo. He's from Jerusalem and he's really religious — he carries his own copy of the Koran around with him.

He told me he couldn't comment on what a woman should look like.

He told me, "She should be nice when her husband touches her, that's fine, to him she should look nice for, not to the [men of the] street, it's because of my religion." He also told me that where he's from, a man should shave under his arms and around his stuff every 40 days, which was news to me.

"It's the religion. It's very hot, we sweat a lot. To be clean. We encourage clean. It's my religion."

Told ya he was religious.

Later, I visited with Bonai, a woman from Venezuela. Unfortunately, I don't speak Spanish, and Bonai speaks very little English, but I can tell you that she showed me a very teeny flowered bikini and said that she had to rid herself of "mucho hair" in order to wear it.

I asked my neighbor Luis, who fought in the Cuban Revolution, what was his take on the whole body hair thing.

"People should do what they want."

Totally cool thing to say from a man who had to fight for his freedom.

I stopped by All In The Family, which is a bar on 13th Street with go-go girls, to talk to Lindy, who hires the dancers, 'cause I'm sure they have to be totally hairless and I wanted to know what would happen if a really hairy woman applied.

Lindy said all her girls shave. She said everything's shaved or it has to be tucked in, because it would be considered lewd to have pubic hair showing. So as long as you don't show pubes, you're not really all the way naked. Who knew?

She said her girls can wear g-strings as big as they want. It's just like in a restaurant, Lindy said, if you're working with food, you have to wear a hairnet. It's the law. Sometimes the girls serve food to the customers, and... well, you get the picture.

So then I had lunch with Anthony Parisio, owner of Cut, a salon on 13th St. He's totally pro body hair removal, cause like it's his business and he really believes in it. He said almost no one likes hair on a man's back and I totally agree.

But he said only 25 percent of the clients in the whole billion-dollar beauty industry are male. And he said as far as he's concerned that's a piss-poor report card for the men in this country. Anthony told me that these guys actually get their girlfriends to remove their hair in a most unprofessional manner. Like how cheap can you get?

According to Anthony, "Lots of men are getting wives and girlfriends to do silly things to them and they look it! When it really screws up is the time the company has an outing at the beach and you can tell who's had their wife taking the electric shaver to their backs."

Anthony said for years women have been going through all kinds of shit to look good for their men and it's time men did it, too.

"If there is really gonna be equality between the sexes, it starts with the little things, don't you think? See, if he likes you looking very hairy, be hairy, and likewise, if you like him not so hairy, he shouldn't be hairy."

Anthony finished up his second grapefruit. "I don't know if it's because I'm Italian or just a Philadelphian, but I'm very opinionated."

You go Anthony!

Well as you can see, I got tons of advice from people, but I realized that no one else can really answer that question: to shave or not to shave. I finally said, Remi, give it up girl, you're the one you need to ask. So like thanks Troy and everyone for all your help, but no thanks.

So to you babes and boys reading this, if you're looking for advice about what to do this summer about your body fuzz, don't bother. You need to look to yourself for these all-important answers.

And always remember: "Cooch Rules!"