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Vote EMLA For Ten More Years of War!
Apr. 16th, 2009 01:54 pmThe War on Hair™ started in 2003. Today seems the latest skirmish. Things have been quiet for the last 4 weeks, which is when I last had electrolysis. This is a recent change because for much of the last year it's been every three weeks, which was just long enough for regrowth to appear and get to the right length to be dealt with. However, in a development which is encouraging, if slightly irritating in its own way, I no-longer have enough regrowth on my face in three weeks to justify making the trip to London for half an hour with the needle (five minutes on the face, and then the next 25 dealing with variously located body hair).
The irritation stems from four weeks being too long for me to just leave the hair alone - it gets sufficiently long to be noticed, which means I'm having to occasionally shave my face again. This is something I thought I'd got past, so that feels like a bit of a regression. It also means that, even if I time it perfectly so that the hairs are just long enough for electro, being shaved hairs they're thick and obvious, as opposed to the wispy shoots that first appear.
This means that I was getting stared at a lot on the train on the way to London, mostly by children. I suspect this is partially because their eyesight is generally better than that of their parents, so they can see the dark hairs against my light skin more easily, and partially because they haven't had "don't stare" socialised out of them yet. Still, smiling back at them seems to produce nice, situation-diffusing results which is not as often the case with adults.
So yes, the War on Hair started out with a dramatic gesture and the appearance of significant initial progress (laser), but degenerated into a long-running low level conflict which, while slowly tailing off, has no near end in sight. That low level conflict has twists and turns I didn't anticipate, and after six years, 23 laser sessions, and countless electrolysis appointments, the whole affair is consuming far more financial resources than I ever imagined.
In a lot of ways, the War on Hair is like the War on Terror, with the possible exception that hair is not an abstract noun, and is therefore something it's actually possible to battle against.
Speaking of cynical fabrications of the American Republican Party (and our own delightful government, who seemed to delight in being George W Bush's global PR agency/spin doctors), the 11:15 to London Kings Cross this morning saw me sitting across from someone who could almost have been Sarah Palin, or at least Sarah Palin minus the oratory skills imparted by being a product of the same political environment which produced the aforementioned George W Bush. This lady was the corporate version of the same archetype though; she sat there in her incredibly crisp business suit and hair tied up on top of her head so tightly that it was bringing large sections of her scalp with it, and gave off the air of someone who had been precisely cut from a solid block of stainless steel. This woman was not about to take any nonsense, and she presented and carried herself in such a way as to let everyone know it. Try anything and she will leverage synergies and liquidate your assets with the blink of an eye from fifty feet.
She was talking loudly into a mobile phone, because it was vital for everyone in the crowded carriage to hear about her important business dealings. In a language that apparently shares many of its words with English, she explained that, "It's not like we need to bring any pee el see skills to the table". I mused on this insight for a while, before deciding to (perhaps rather ungratefully) pass up on any further loud broadcasts on the use of tables and other furniture in corporate protocol and instead listened to Erasure, loudly, on my iPod. Blue Savannah makes no sense either, but at least it's catchy.
Anyway, I must sign off now - the cling film on my face has nearly finished its job of ensuring all the EMLA sticks to it and not my skin, and it's almost time to fight The 153rd Battle of the Chin. Long live Freedom!
The irritation stems from four weeks being too long for me to just leave the hair alone - it gets sufficiently long to be noticed, which means I'm having to occasionally shave my face again. This is something I thought I'd got past, so that feels like a bit of a regression. It also means that, even if I time it perfectly so that the hairs are just long enough for electro, being shaved hairs they're thick and obvious, as opposed to the wispy shoots that first appear.
This means that I was getting stared at a lot on the train on the way to London, mostly by children. I suspect this is partially because their eyesight is generally better than that of their parents, so they can see the dark hairs against my light skin more easily, and partially because they haven't had "don't stare" socialised out of them yet. Still, smiling back at them seems to produce nice, situation-diffusing results which is not as often the case with adults.
So yes, the War on Hair started out with a dramatic gesture and the appearance of significant initial progress (laser), but degenerated into a long-running low level conflict which, while slowly tailing off, has no near end in sight. That low level conflict has twists and turns I didn't anticipate, and after six years, 23 laser sessions, and countless electrolysis appointments, the whole affair is consuming far more financial resources than I ever imagined.
In a lot of ways, the War on Hair is like the War on Terror, with the possible exception that hair is not an abstract noun, and is therefore something it's actually possible to battle against.
Speaking of cynical fabrications of the American Republican Party (and our own delightful government, who seemed to delight in being George W Bush's global PR agency/spin doctors), the 11:15 to London Kings Cross this morning saw me sitting across from someone who could almost have been Sarah Palin, or at least Sarah Palin minus the oratory skills imparted by being a product of the same political environment which produced the aforementioned George W Bush. This lady was the corporate version of the same archetype though; she sat there in her incredibly crisp business suit and hair tied up on top of her head so tightly that it was bringing large sections of her scalp with it, and gave off the air of someone who had been precisely cut from a solid block of stainless steel. This woman was not about to take any nonsense, and she presented and carried herself in such a way as to let everyone know it. Try anything and she will leverage synergies and liquidate your assets with the blink of an eye from fifty feet.
She was talking loudly into a mobile phone, because it was vital for everyone in the crowded carriage to hear about her important business dealings. In a language that apparently shares many of its words with English, she explained that, "It's not like we need to bring any pee el see skills to the table". I mused on this insight for a while, before deciding to (perhaps rather ungratefully) pass up on any further loud broadcasts on the use of tables and other furniture in corporate protocol and instead listened to Erasure, loudly, on my iPod. Blue Savannah makes no sense either, but at least it's catchy.
Anyway, I must sign off now - the cling film on my face has nearly finished its job of ensuring all the EMLA sticks to it and not my skin, and it's almost time to fight The 153rd Battle of the Chin. Long live Freedom!
