Nicola Vincent-Abnett

Nicola Vincent-Abnett
"Savant" for Solaris, Wild's End, Further Associates of Sherlock Holms, more Wild's End

Monday 9 July 2012

Hair Today...


One of my male friends on FaceBook recently posted a picture of himself with his face newly shaved for the first time in decades. This man, literally, hasn’t been clean-shaven for the majority of his adult life.
The picture did not come as a huge revelation to me, but it did serve to cement, yet again, one of my long-held beliefs. It also made me question it.
Here it is:
I have never met a man that I didn’t find more attractive with less head hair and more facial hair.
Why is that, do you suppose?
I met the husband when he was still a teenager, and yet he was already able to grow a full beard and was thinning on top. This could, I suppose, be part of the explanation.
On the other hand, my father still has almost all of his head hair, despite being in his 80s, and I don’t believe I have ever seen him with either a beard or moustache, despite the fact that I have also never seen him without his mutton-chop sideburns, or, as I prefer to call them, his ‘bugger grips’.
The husband has been through various versions of face furniture from goatees and soul patches to the full furry. There is simply less and less of his head hair, with the passage of time. He currently visits the Turkish barber regularly, and has his head shaved with a cut-throat razor; his ears de-fuzzed with giant, petrol dipped, flaming Q-tips; and his eyebrows and beard trimmed, but not edged (God save us from hard-edged facial hair). 
I think he looks terribly dashing, and there’s something very pleasing about touching a well-shaved, well-oiled bald head. It’s somehow very intimate.
Bald has never been more beautiful, as far as I’m concerned, but I’m afraid that I must draw the line at heads.
I’m all for a bit of grooming. In fact, I like to be well-groomed myself, albeit, I have no particular fetish for the sort of universal hairlessness that the majority of women seem to prefer this century. I have never waxed anything, save for my eyebrows, and that’s only because I no longer see well enough to pluck them. It has never crossed my mind to concern myself with the hair that grows on my arms or upper legs and I am perfectly comfortable with what might be referred to as a ‘European’ attitude to body hair, for women, but, more particularly, for men.
It isn’t that I find naturally hairless men unattractive, I simply don’t understand why any man would choose to remove his body hair. If it’s vanity, frankly, as far as I’m concerned, it’s backfiring all over the place.
Call me old-fashioned, but if a man needs to spend more time in the bathroom than I do, he’s doing too much grooming, and hair seems to be a big part of that. Men’s head hair fashions seem to have become increasingly absurd, and their body hair seems to be disappearing before our very eyes.
I have few rules when it comes to affairs of the heart, but I have been known to joke that I couldn’t possibly have sex with a man who had longer hair than I have, and, right now, mine’s about an inch long. You work it out. 

1 comment:

  1. So interesting to hear about your tastes. Personally, I prefer men with a full head of hair but short hair. No gel. Just clean and silky. I prefer clean-shaven faces, but one thing I detest is the so-called designer stubble. What is the point of it? It's prickly and gives a bit of an "I don't care" message. I'm afraid I don't like the untidy look. If I make an effort to look well-groomed and elegant, so should the man.

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