Hair-raising Scourge Has Us Living On The Razor's Edge

Newcastle Herald

Thursday August 6, 1998

BEN DOHERTY

W E humans have mastered just about everything there is to master.

We've conquered space and the oceans, we've cured the incurable and we've managed to keep Bert Newton on television non-stop for 300 years.

But that old body hair problem just keeps eluding us doesn't it?

No matter what we come up with, it just keeps growing back, only each time with friends.

Of course when it comes to mankind's war on hair, it's been the female of the species who has been at the front line.

For some reason the Western world doesn't dig chicks with hairy armpits or calves, so unfortunately for women it's they who've had to be in the thick of it . . . so to speak.

Then again, modern social mores also dictate a man with a hairy back has all the worth and charm of a sick goldfish, so us blokes have had to keep vigilant as well.

But all the vigilance in the world hasn't got us very far, has it?

Despite a rich armoury of shaving, waxing and defoliating products we still wake each morning with a fresh coat and a new challenge to start the day.

It would seem that other than setting ourselves alight there's not much we can do that we haven't already done.

I remember not too many years ago an American businessman believed he'd stumbled across the long-sought key to hair removal.

In fact he was so impressed with the discovery, he foolishly pooled all his money and `bought the company'.

You can only imagine his distress when he woke the next morning to find his facial hair had returned.

Such are the lengths man will go to find a cure.

But even I have to admit leaps and bounds have been made towards finding that cure.

When I was a lad, there was no such thing as double-bladed razors with aloe vera moisture strips, there were no microwavable home waxing kits, there were no electric pluckers and there was no electrolysis.

Or maybe there was, I dunno, I was never really interested in the cause back then, I didn't have enough hair.

But I reckon my Gillette Sensor would piddle all over whatever Dad was forced to use back in the dark ages before the Razor Reformation of the mid-1980s.

From what I can remember they didn't even have stainless steel back then, did they?

And I shudder to think what my grandfather would have had to use, probably some kind of flint or maybe they had to train monkeys