do NOT be a mangey bear down there.....

So, as you know, I am blogging columnist for a women's mega-blog, She Says, by the ladies (and Gary). Here is todays thang on shaving....and YES, you may recognize yourself here!

Confessions of a Kept man: diary of an anarcho-punk potter and househusband, by Gary.

OK, so Thursday was one of those challenging days, where everything goes wrong, and then overnight? The well CONKS OUT. No water! I call the guys, and they look around, shake their heads, mutter a lot, and say "we'll see you Monday". And its like "GREAT! No water until Monday?". Luckily we dragged water buckets from the neighbors to see us through. But some things dropped out, like, um, flushing every time, and shaving. I just took that pic there, its been a couple of days since the razor saw my face....

Shaving has become one of those bewildering things, here in our society. In my youth, it seemed like we let our freak flags fly. Then we get to the rollicking twenty-teens and its like, even in the NY TIMES June 17: man shaving it all. But you look at ads, and models have five days growth on the face, NOTHING on the chest. And women, of course, have discovered that there is more to Brazil than soccer and beaches.

We watched THE WRESTLER the other day, and there is Mickey Rourke shaving his pits, ewwww! What happened to my hero, hairy Tom Selleck? Back in 1993 I grew a mustache like his. It got BIG and fuzzy. In the late 90s, although I was married to a woman, guys who play for the other team gave me their phone number. Winked at me. I was like, HUH? In 2003, the stache came OFF and when the wife got home, she was like, for the first time "Thank GOD". She was too polite to say anything for ten years....

My good friend Bob has remarked on this fact, shaving is BORING. It is. Bobby, as you remember from last week, may be the most handsome man on earth, and he sure does, um, seem to get around with the ladies. I ask Bobby what he prefers:
"every few days I use a beard trimmer on my face, that is IT".

I went to my BAMF posse of women panelists for advice, once again. Its a good thing I did:

"The comments on undies was sensational. Can I pick your brain slightly once again?

Gary
MEN: shaving, the face, the head, the _______

Lizzie
lol i may need to think on this one .....

Gary
pour some cheapo jug vino and let 'er rip.....


Jill
Shaving.... okay.... I will go from top to, er... bottom...

The Head: ...if you are in the mood.... bic-it baby! I don't actually mind a bald head at all...on the right guy... my husband would look silly. :) However, and my personal favorite, if you can grow it long - grow it long!! I ♥ the mountain man look. ;) Anything in between is good too.

The Face: If you can grow a full beard then for god sakes man! GROW A BEARD! I have a HUGE weakness for a man in a full beard. My husband (god love him) wears a full bead all year long - just because I think he looks so freaking fine with a full beard. ( i have attached a photo of my husband with said beard as an example - I am in the back ground). ... again I ♥ the mountain man look. ;)

The Nether-Region: Hmmm... well... I don't really care I guess. I guess I would prefer it au-natural - but bottom line KEEP IT CLEAN! ;)

In my opinion - shaving is optional! ;)


Becky Jo
Jill, you're so freakin' funny... 'The Nether-Region' <---- !!! ;)

Gary
ROCK ON JILL. That is key, I think: different guys look better with different shaving looks. MORE opinons please! gr

Becky Jo
Ok, sorry... I was still laughing about Jill's post.... shaving, ok... here it goes.

The Noggin: Shaving is ok if you've got a good shaped head. My darling husband CLAIMS that he has a bumpy head, so he'll never shave it, which is ok with me. I have a friend that shaves his head religiously, and that's because he's my age and is already going bald.. so yeah, it's a good move for him... plus his noggin is round w/o weird bumps.

The face: I prefer no face hair on the spouse, mostly because he'll never grow a full beard so that 5 day growth thing isn't any fun. It's spikey and that makes for no-fun kissing. Brian has grown a goatee before, and that's pretty hot. As far as all the other guys on the planet, grow whatever your lady will let you grow. Shaving as a task sucks and if you don't have to, why do it?

Down south: Why? Why would any man shave there? I vote a big hairy NO to shaving down south. It just seems to risky. ;)

Way down south... I vote all guys that have giant hairy toes shave them. Why? Because feet are gross enough just the way they are, why add toe hair to the mix?... well, maybe you want to pretend your a hobbit in Lord of the Rings, but still... hairy toes are creepy.

Gary
TOES! The last frontier....

Kasey
I am anti-facial hair. A bit of scruff is fine, but beards/moustaches/goatees. No. I feel like beards hide the handsome. One of my best friends had one forever (He finally shaved it. When I saw his face I clapped and squealed.) He kept saying, "Well I hate my face." It's a good face! Nothing to hate. Let your face be out and proud.
Then you see Jill's husband the beard works. So who am I to say? I guess if you want me to clap, jump and squeal at the site of you you'll go facial hairless.

The head. As my best friend has said, "People that shave their head when they aren't going bald is a slap in the face to bald men everywhere." I stand by his statement.

Down in the pants. Keep it tidy. Shaving it all off? I've read Cosmo, are you doing this as an optical illusion to make it appear larger? It just makes it weird looking. You aren't fooling anyone.

Jill
OMG... I just LOVE you ladies... you all keep me in stitches! :D

Kasey
I would say shaving their weens is probably only as risky as us shaving our vajeenes. I doubt many men go down there with a straight razor. THAT would be risky.

Gary
KEEP IT TIDY?
And maybe not ALL men need to do anything to make their whopper look bigger, because it is already a wildebeast.
I will be honest here: I was gonna have ultra-sound and a wee bit of surgery on my OO I was told to you know, shave it off. Wicked difficult, frankly. And later, there you are, in a dark room with this young woman who is an ultra-sound tecnician and you are undressed and she smears lube all over your OO and also your !
and you WOULD think it is a XXX experience, but NO! Full retreat. Lady goes home later and probably tells her husband she saw the smallest weenie on earth today...and then, in surgery? Again you are undressed, and here is this HOT nurse and you know, she has to grab your ! and your OO and you would think it is a XXX experience, but what you get is full retreat from fear, and she probably goes home and tells her husband she saw the tiniest weenie on earth today. Dinner time conversation no doubt.


Kasey
The thing is, I think boys are kind of a bunch of pussies.
We gotta contort our bodies in all sorts of ways to be sure we're presentable to put on a dang bathing suit. Going out in something as modest as underpants isn't bad enough, we have to make sure we don't let the world know that we are human and grow hair in places that humans grow hair.
Ya'll get to wear shorts and let yourselves be as hairy as you wanna be under there.

Tidy means, if the area looks like it belongs to a mangey bear, do a bit of trimming.

Christi
What Kasey said. I vote for tidy. As for sharp instruments and sensitive bits, there's always waxing.

Gary Edward Rith June 24 at 10:46am
I might be a mangey bear, but I am LOVEABLE, and probably HAWT in a Burt Reynolds 1978 kinda way.

Kasey

I say let everyone do with their pubes what they want.

Jill
I am down with the 1978 look... probably because I was born in the wrong generation... I'm just asking that it is washed regularly. ;)

Becky Jo
Oh god.... can't breathe... so funny... Gary, stop it. My stomach hurts.

Gary Edward Rith June 24 at 12:00pm
SPEAKING of 1978, and I am so glad we have a cross section of tastes AND ages here, when I was 12, which I was in 1978, a boy could not WAIT to get the manly chest hair. You kinda shake your head these days and you're like "what are young men DOING?". Becky Jo, your husband has the absolute best hair atop his head---take the man to HOLLYWOOD he is so handsome!

Maureen
I love a clean shaven Man! Although I am a firm believer in people should do what they feel most confortable with. I wouldn't want George to shave his pubic area. If he did (which wouldn't happen unless he was put in front of a firing squad} it would be okay too. We just do the regular shaving hygiene routines. Honest, saw a foreign woman at our beach with huge bushy armpits, her crotch hair was so long it came out of her bikini bottom and wrapped to the front of her suit. Her legs had more hair than my husbands, and she had a huge dark moustache, complete with hairy toes and fingers. And no this was not a man, the kids were the same. Her husband looked like a Yeti! Now in that case I would use a weed wacker on George and I! lol lol lol :) God I actually saw the Bride of Bigfoot, and her family! :) I wish I would of had a camera then..all of you wouldn't believe it!

Gary
GOLLY thanks Maureen. BRIDE OF BIGFOOT! Back in my youth I had a thing going with Bride of Bigfoot's niece. People were a lot hairier back then......"




Back to reality. The water is back on, thanks to my new best buddies the well guys, and later I will BATHE for the first time in a couple of days. But, you know, I got this macho scruff going on here. Does it turn on the LADIES? There is only one lady that counts, and I ask whether it should go or stay the wife says:

"I like a little scruff, I like a little beard burn on my......." WELL THEN!


Gary Edward Rith is a househusband, full-time studio potter and sculptor and part-time instructor at the Cornell University Pot Shop. Confessions of a Kept Man appears every Monday and Thursday, and Gary's answer column "He Says: ask a guy, by Gary" appears every Wednesday. Gary blogs a whole lot of pottery and other baloney at his blog
http://garysthirdpotteryblog.blogspot.com/

Check out Gary at pottersblog! and at www.garyrith.com or at my online etsy sales gallery!