Gorilla Clinic — I get it. A man is a gorilla if he's hairy. The BBC is reporting on a survey taken by this men's hair-removal business. Who came up with this idea that it's "harassment" to have to see a man's hairy legs in the office? I'm skeptical. It's just aesthetics.Akifumi Funatsu, the director of Gorilla Clinic, says he has noticed more clients coming to the clinic not just for cosmetic reasons, but as a matter of "social etiquette when wearing shorts." He thinks women believe that "men should have less leg hair," which has prompted them to seek laser hair removal so as not to offend those around them.
Anyway, as long as I'm talking about men in shorts, here's some video from the AC/DC concert last Sunday at Camp Randall, the UW football stadium a few blocks from our house. It was kind of funny to be lying in bed, falling asleep and hearing the live performance, which was pretty quiet by the time it reached our house:
Posts
31 comments:
Be aware that these complaints come from a culture where women previously flushed public toilets contantly -- so that others wouldn't hear "rude and embarrassing" sounds. As such, Japanese toilet vendors added recording flushing sounds that play constantly. It saves water, and saves the tender nerves of the pathologically anxious. As here.
It's akin to DEI 'microaggressions' -- mainly a revealing Rorschach test for those who complain.
Full-length, loosely-fitting, linen-cotton pants are just as comfortable as shorts. And if they're light in color, they're even cooler in the direct sun.
Meadehouse - You been Thunderstruck.
This is the quintessential Althouse post.
Japanese people would apparently have a large problem with Floridians.
But what about “old man, short pants, hairy legs”?
That 70s show, indeed.
Ah Wisconsin... I remember the pre-Walker days when you were still looking "Forward!", not backwards as Bellamy once wrote...
(ask AI to explain it, meade...)
Men not liking hair on women--patriarchy.
Women not liking hair on men--harassment (the men harassing the women!)
House, not bed... hm
You two still in separate rooms? *shaking m' head...* They sell em king-size which is very roomy for two, you know. No excuses. You two would be more content with your lots in life if you shared a bed regularly. The world needs peace, start at home ? Spare the children
I'm reminded of a few trips I took around 25 years ago to a corporate headquarters in a part of Japan that rarely received foreign visitors. I'm average height for a westerner, but in that city, I towered above most of the people. They would see me walking down the street and they would stare and make way for me to walk.
Anyway, even though the company was very modern, it still had a traditional secretarial pool. Whenever I passed it, there was an increased buzz in the air. Eventually, I reached a level of mutual comfort with my "handler" that allowed me to ask about it. I was told that the secretaries called me "the golden teddy bear" because of my fair hair and fuzzy arms.
Critical Affirmative Hirsutementarian Action
The Japanese have certainly changed their culture around since July 1945.
IIRC, the Japanese always looked down on the "hairy," less "Asian" Ainu in the North who may have been the original inhabitants of their islands.
Easy to see why Japan's birthrate is below replacement level.
Now do armpit hair displays from men wearing "wife-beaters."
It seems all the brave Japanese, brave English, brave Germans, brave French, brave Italians, etc. died off during WW2. Only the (female and female-like) homebodies survived to form the EU and ultra-safe Japan.
Speaking of disturbing leg hair.
I was seated in a college seminar with perhaps a dozen students, in a close circle with our professor to encourage maximum intellectual exchange. Among us was a black-haired hippie woman in a short wraparound dress with exceedingly long, vigorous, and unruly black leg hair, which she’d (mysteriously) attempted to constrain with sheer nylon pantyhose. Having apparently missed lunch, she took a full container of Nancy’s yogurt (a local hippie favorite, manufactured by a company owned by Ken Kesey’s brother) and attempted to stir in an equal portion of unruly alfalfa sprouts and then eat it all in front of the seminar as the unperturbed professor lectured on.
Needless to say I was scarred for life.
Between Biff and Earnest Prole, I don't know who has the better story, but both are first rate!
On a scale of 1 to 10 of Japanese weirdness this is about a 2.
If Althouse wants to really entertain her readers, she would post a weird Japanese story once a week. Makes the upper east side craziness from the NYT look tame.
I was going to comment with an experience very similar to Earnest Prole’s. Except it was on a city bus and they were Evergreen students. My 19 year-old self struggled for a moment to understand what I was seeing as I had never any thought to the idea of female leg-shaving.
“Given” any thought.
Just dye the leg bair blue, add a ring piercing and wear programming socks that say "groomer rights are human rights!"
Then everything will be ok according to NYMag and the Guardian, and the Laws of Perpetual Identity Grievances will be satisfied.
Biff, the receptionists at our Tokyo office (c. 1995) hid their mouths and giggled after I greeted them each morning. I eventually asked a local colleague about it, and he said I had committed three faux pas. First, I had evidently been taught Japanese by a woman (true) and was not using the proper masculine phrasing and curt gruffness, second, I was deigning to notice them at all, and third, my then-brilliant red hair had shocked them out of their normal polite composure.
Could be worse, could be Speedos.
No one is ready to talk about bikini management yet. I’ll wait til after the midterm elections.
"Let me tell you how the little black kids at the pool were fascinated by my leg hair."
---Joe Biden
A friend of mine at St. John's in Santa Fe back in the mid 70s had before college been to Japan as part of his tour in the army. He was hairy as a bear, with even a hairy back that you would need a lawnmower to tame. He said that on the few occasions he used the public baths in Japan when he got in the tub, all the Japanese got out.
This reminds me of the 007 flick You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery when the Japanese women are shaving his chest hair to help him blend in.
@Fred Drinkwater - Indeed, that became a very familiar reaction. Travel to Japan was exhausting, but it was equal parts fascinating and entertaining.
I'm just happy that the Professor enjoyed my story.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.