I loved the hyperbole in the scene on page 76 (and more) where Randy describes Charlene's paper on beards. She goes to such great lengths to research this paper! She watches porn designed for shaving fetishists ("watching a video of a straight razor being drawn along wet, soapy flesh"), she scours Gilette statistics, and even comes up with statistics about different races and their beard growth. (I found that statement somwhat false. Is she counting all ethnicities? I feel she made a generalized statement... Anyway, I digress.) I thought the survey she took was very hilarious--that essentially all women preferred clean shaven men-- and I definitely agreed. I very much prefer clean shaven men! However, this is one of the marked differences between men and women. I feel many men actually admire other men's facial hair and are often very envious of this. Do any men (or women) care to give me their thoughts on this??
Facial hair and shaving fetishes
By Surgiomcsurgexc - Posted on 10 April 2007 - 8:20pm.
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I really loved this section. I thought it just sounded so ludicrous that "On the strength of her beard work, three different Ivy League schools" are fighting for Charlene (77).
While it is true that some Asians hardly grow any facial hair, I have known some hairy Asians in my life, so I know that Charlene does overgeneralize. Actually, now that I think about it, in a lot of those Chinese dramas set during some glorified dynasty long ago, a lot of the older male characters have mustaches and long beards. In regards to American Indians, my roommate was telling me that Mexicans like facial hair because "Indios" are usually pretty hairless; thus, those who have more hair generally have more Spanish blood. Oh! I also agree with the preference for clean shaven men. Unless, of course, we're talking about McSteamy from Grey's anatomy. That man should never shave off his beard.
I really loved this section too, especially the fact that Randy has a full beard and feels so uncomfortable when he accompanies her to lectures and things. And the fact that Charlene is going to such great lengths to criticize a feature of her boyfriend's (and all of his techy friends), "that all of her work was basically an elaborate prophecy of the doom of their relationship," adds such a funny aspect--why are they even together? They don't seem to like each other much!
And it's funny, because the whole time I was reading this section, I was mentally disagreeing--my girl friends and I actually just talked about how we prefer bearded guys. According to Charlotte, though, beards are just a sign of "racist and sexist attitudes and a pattern of emotional unavailability..." Hahaa, who knew facial hair could mean so much.
And later Randy shaves his beard off and decides that Charlene was right. He really likes that "the blodd-spotted visage in the mirror is, arguable, better looking that the one that faded into the deepening shade of stubble a decade ago. It looks like a grownup's face" (97)