It Slices, It Dices!

There comes a time in every young girl's life when the pressure of her peers becomes too much to handle. Yet before this momentous failing of will power can occur, for a brief period of time, she manages holds out. She thinks, No, I won't cave. She has many reasons for not caving. First, she would like to think that it's not really all that important to fit in. She knows this. She's seen examples of other people not caving, sticking up for what they believe in, and she knows if she's really adamant and brave, she will survive the heckles of her peers. Second, and more importantly, she knows her mother will kill her if she caves. After all, Mom said not to do this. Mom said that when and if she ever felt the urge to do this, she was to come to Mom and Mom would help. Mom meant well. Mom was just trying to spare her agony and pain, after all. That's what moms do. But it was a little weird, what her mom was asking her to do, or at least that's how she felt anyway, so one day, nigh in that twelfth year of life, when the pressure became too much, when she'd taken one too many comments about how animal-like she looked....

...she caved and shaved her legs. Without her mother's help and advice.

And sliced herself to ribbons.

See, there is a reason to listen to Mom, after all. It saves you pints of blood over the long run.

It seems many, many people have been chiming in about shaving over the past week or so. Not surprisingly, though, they've all been men. Now, I have a husband. I know what a pain in the face shaving can be for him. However, the majority of his problems with this chore have gone the way of the Dodo ever since he bought a Mach 3 razor and started washing his face WITH SOAP AND CLEAN WATER once he was done shaving. (If you have problems with ingrown hairs, gents, this little tip will save you from breaking out. I read about it in a magazine. The husband doesn't slice himself up nearly as badly as he used to. Besides, think about it: you're dragging that razor through hair, shaving cream and you're simply rinsing it off with water, or, even worse, you're dipping it into a big puddle of bacteria-laden water and then transferring it onto your face. No wonder your pores get infected!) I also understand how ungodly expensive razors can be, as I'm generally the one who purchases them for the husband. I understand just about everything associated with men scraping their faces: what I don't understand is why they whine about it so freakin' much.

Waaaaaaaaah. Suck it up, dudes. You've got it easy.

Think I'm being sarcastic about this one? Think I don't have any empirical evidence to back up my case? Hmmm? Well, I do. Let's do the math.

Now, I'm not the tallest person known to man. I'm 5'6". While I will grudgingly admit I do not have a set of legs that would make Tina Turner shriek loudly in a fit of jealousy, I don't think they're half bad. They're just not as long as they could be because the Gene Fairy decided to bless me with a long torso instead. So, if I'm remembering my grade school math properly, The formula to figure the surface area of a parallelogram (which is the closest geometric shape when we're talking about legs) is A=1/2H(B1 + B2). We will do this in inches, because I'm American and homey don't play the metric system. Also, given this is the internet, I'm sure you'll all understand if I don't show you the math.

Anyway...

The surface area of one of Kathy's legs= 511.5 square inches.

I do have two legs, so doubling that means I'm shaving---approximately---1,023 square inches every damn day of my life. Because I have dark hair. So I have to shave every day.

Are you men shaving 1,023 square inches every time you scrape your face with a razor? I didn't think so.

Add into this joy the fact that, while I'm in the shower, I cannot wear my glasses. Hence, I am shaving while blind. I must use my sense of touch by passing my left hand along my leg after the razor to ascertain where the razor has been successful and where it has not. This gets tricky when maneuvering my three-bladed Venus around the various bumpy joint surfaces of my knees and ankles. And, believe you me, there is no place you can run a razor across a face that will ever issue as much blood as when you slice through the skin covering your Achilles tendon. It, quite simply, gushes blood. There's a vein there. I've cut it often enough over my twenty-two years of shaving to know.

And of course, none of this counts for the other areas we women shave and men do not. Because that's a whole 'nother story entirely.

I'm sure my partners in crime would agree with me when I say to you, o' men o' the world, "Shhhhh."

Posted by Kathy at February 8, 2005 10:33 AM