April 2, 2014 • 33 mins
Beard popularity has led some razor companies to promote more "manscaping" below the neck. Caroline and Cristen explore how men are becoming more invested in hair removal and grooming than ever before.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you From house supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristin. Today we are talking about hair or
not hair or some hair or a little hair, long hair,
back hair, men hair, men hair, yeah, man hair. I
(00:26):
happened to be very pro man hair. Um. I am
dating someone who has a fantastic beard. It is a
glorious beard. I've seen a Caroline glorious beard. And you
know what, I didn't always prefer beards. It was in
college I would have said no to the beard face.
But I don't know if something happened in my formative
post college years and and now now I am pro beard,
(00:49):
pro beard. Yeah, I am dating a gentleman who is
less hairy, and I love him just the same. I'm
also very pro beard. Um. And but and he gets
a nice little scruff. But no, it is no glorious
beard like your your gentleman's beard. I will say that right.
And um, he does my gentleman. Uh does a little
(01:14):
bit of cleaning up. He does like the barbershop on
occasion to get it to get it shaped. But he's
not big into like a whole lot of man escaping,
And we should say that this episode is not devoted
to beards, but we have to start this conversation off
with the beard, because this rising popularity of men and
(01:35):
their beards is not not not to be confused with
a metaphorical beard as another podcast episode. Uh. This beard popularity, though,
has had a fascinating ripple effect in the male grooming
industry right and in marketing and advertising in general. So
let's talk about this quote unquote trend, shall we um?
(01:56):
And we know it's a trend because a million different
publications have told us that it's a trend, including the
New York Times, who back in January, all the way
back in January of this year reported on beards as
if they were this fancy new thing out of Brooklyn. Yeah,
and all of it sort of kicked off with the
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney coming out for the
(02:20):
first press conference, often sporting a beard. And so the
New York Times says, well, if there are beards in
the White House, then something must be afoot because they
also cited to Lloyd C. Blankfein, who's the Goldman Sex
chief executive, who was wearing a beard at the World
(02:43):
Economic Form and when I say wearing a beard, I
feel like that sounds like it was just like a
scarf that he wrapped around his face. Yeah, or it
had little hooks that hooked behind his ears. Yeah, he
would take off. Yeah. No. Um, even Matt Lower and
l Broker were sporting beards as part of No Shave
Today back in November, as part of the whole November
movement growing your mustache and support of men's health, and um,
(03:06):
it's just funny to see facial hair reported on as
if it's like hot pink stilettos or something like, oh
my goodness, look at what they're wearing. Well. I didn't
do any research into the author that this New York
Times reporter, but I'm curious just in this fascination with
men of great social status sporting beards. I'm wondering if
(03:27):
this reporter was a little bit older, because for our
parents generation, having a beard would have been considered very counterculture. Um,
and now it's you know, this maybe baffling to them
that it's this almost not status symbol, but it's a
cool thing for a guy to have a beard. And
I will say that my favorite phrase also from that
(03:48):
article was quote Duck Dynasty style monstrosity. Well, no, I
will say that the Duck Dynasty beards are monstrosities, and
I risk getting hate mail for this. But those men,
some of those men on that show are are handsome.
The younger men, Yeah, they there's some handsome handsomeness behind
those beards. But yeah, there's a there. There could also
(04:09):
be a lot of things objects hidden within those beards,
judging by Okay, so the days that it's cold outside
and I'm wearing a scarf, judging by the amount of
food crumbs I find in the scarf at the end
of the day, I can only imagine what they find
in their beards. Yes, yes, whole slim gyms, cheese cubes.
But this this beard thing is apparently such a trend.
(04:30):
It is so popular and in style right now that
people are going so far as to get beard implants.
And there aren't any hard numbers around the this rise
and beard transplants, but anecdotally at least, plastic surgeons are
saying that more men and especially men in their twenties
and thirties are coming in plunking down up to eight
(04:53):
hundred dollars for beard transplants. We'll see that's weird. My
question is like, once either this is not a trend
and it's not cool, or you just personally decide you
don't want a beard anymore. Aren't you left with scars?
I mean, I don't know how transplants like that really work. Yeah,
I have no idea there There wasn't that was left
out of all of these reports on beard transplants was
(05:14):
how you know what happens if you don't want that
hair anymore? But speaking of scars, the guy who first
developed this procedure Dr Bess and far Joe over in
the u K. He was the founder of the far
Joe Hair Institute, and he developed this beard transplant particularly
for people who were victims of burns who had a
(05:35):
lot of face scarring, sort of as a way to
cover it up. But now it's just more of a
fashion statement, right And Dr Jeffrey Epstein, who's in Midtown,
Manhattan based plastic surgeon, who was quoted by The New
York Post in February, says that his clients want full
beards because it's a masculine look. Beards are an important
male identifier, so there's that aspect of it. You want
(05:59):
to look manly or but the New York Post itself
referred to this as a hipster inspired style, a lumberjack
meets roady hybrid that was made popular in neighborhoods such
as Williamsburg, Bushwick and Park Slope. So they're very like
hammering down on the fact of it apparently stems from
these certain neighborhoods. Yeah, I mean those are those are
definitely the hipster hotbeds in the Northeast. Um and Epstein
(06:22):
says that he now performs two or three of these
procedures each week, and what they do is take hair
from other body parts like a dude's head or his chest,
and then hair by hair implant it into the face,
which sounds horrendously painful, but again anecdotally, patients seem happy
(06:46):
with it. And there was a follow up article on
this in CNN and they would to wear around to
other hipster hot beds, which made me laugh and reported
that also plastic surgeons in places like Portland's, Austin, Nashville,
and even over in London are are seeing this trend
as well. I thought, I seriously thought this New York
(07:08):
Post article on it was a joke. I seriously did
but then but it is not, and I it just
blows my mind because I don't personally that I know
of I know any guy who would actually go through
with it, because it seems like such an undertaking. I
do know guys who are insecure about their inability to
grow beards. Um. Actually shameless plug for the Smenty YouTube channel,
(07:32):
I did a video recently called the Science of Stubble,
looking at why some guys can't grow beards, because yeah,
I've talked to two friends of I just have patchy
beards or can barely even grow a shadow over their lip,
and so I think that I think there is some
some self consciousness out there because beards are also considered
(07:54):
that sign of outward masculinity, even though Caroline fun fact,
it has nothing to do with your levels of testosterone.
If you cannot grow beard, good to know. I'll keep
that in my back pocket. You remember that, well you growing.
Not being able to grow your beard does not mean
you have LOWD to Okay, that actually might mean um well.
(08:17):
Hopping on this conversation bandwagon is gq um, who declares
that the trend is actually over based on the fact
solely that the New York Times has said the beard
is a trend. G Q says it's no longer a trend.
They're they're mainly making fun of the New York Times article,
but they're pointing out that, Hello, plenty of businessmen both
(08:37):
past and present have sported beards. Yeah, Scott Christian Sites,
Steve jobs, Been, Bernanke, Larry Ellison, uh, former richest man
in the world, Carlos Slim, all these different guys of
you know, prominent stature who have beards, and his headline
kind of stummed it all up. Beards are officially uncool
(08:59):
because the New York Times called them a trend, and
there is I mean, New York trend. Pieces like this
are hilarious because they are often so completely obvious and
make a lot out of what is kind of a
little And he describes them as the media obverse of
Cartesian philosophy. I think therefore I am no longer so.
(09:20):
Once New York Times says something is, then apparently Brooklyn
guys are gonna be running home and grabbing their razors.
It's kind of like the equivalent of my mother getting
on Facebook. Yeah, like okay, all right, all right, um,
but I mean, okay, so so now we're getting into
the whole point, which is this beard trend. Man, it
(09:43):
is hurting razor sales, and a lot of these companies
like Gillette and Braun and other companies like that, are
turning to other options to make their money. Yeah, And
what they're essentially doing is saying, Okay, well, guys aren't
as concerned about shaving their face every day, so what
can we make them more concerned about hair wise so
(10:04):
we can keep selling these razors. Oh yeah, body hair
man scaping right. So according to NPR back in January,
I love it because at the same time as these
beard trend stories are coming out, in PR starts reporting
that Procter and Gamble uh is complaining that this facial
(10:24):
hair trend is hurting their sales and their razor division.
They even Proctor and Gamble even singled out November, which
is the tradition of growing facial hair to promote awareness
of prostate cancer. They even singled that out as part
of the reason why their sales are down. They also
say it's sparked by a shift to disposal razors over
the traditional blade and cartridge systems. But because of all this,
(10:47):
they are turning to manscaping as an answer to declining sales.
And by manscaping, we mean guys shaving things other than
their faces. And um, for a little more specificity, with
Procter and Gambles razors sales, the sale of their Razors
amblades were down seven point eight percent in the twelve
(11:08):
weeks through December twenty one, so that does seem to
correlate perhaps to November. Um. And but their entire grooming division,
which includes razors, shaving cream and deodorant, was actually up
three percent last year. But um, I mean, but that's
not huge numbers, so I don't know. I kind of
wonder how much This is also Procter and Gamble just
sort of taking advantage of the trend to say, oh, yeah, yeah,
(11:32):
we were really scared of beard, so we were selling
all these other things, right, Uh, like this razor sold
by models. Guys. Look, it's Kate Upton. She doesn't like
back hair, right, Yeah, they had they hired Kate Upton
and two other models to basically shill for different types
of Gillette razors, different manscaping things. You know. It's they're like, here,
(11:56):
let's just get some really attractive women on camera to
tell you how this gusting you are to breathe this
insecurity so that you'll buy our products to clean yourself up. Yeah,
And along with these videos of Kate Upton and I
was a little disappointed to see Hannah Simone, who is
on the New Girl UM talking about how guys just
like Nandal's shave I mean, and it really, I'm not
(12:18):
trying to make fun of women. It really was in
the tone of like, I mean, if we shave, Gosh
jev on a spotial of their chests and box and
it's the same kind of insecurities being pedaled to women
of like, ladies, we should shave so guys, male models
(12:40):
will want us, right. And this this definitely is not
a new m O because this is exactly what Gillette
did a hundred years ago to women. Basically, uh, women
were not shaving any more than men were. But in
nineteen fifteen, Gillette created the first razer specifically for women.
But it had to create the market for it. And
(13:02):
so you know, there's all of these this like huge
advertising blitz calling body here unsightly on women, creating this
desire among women to basically, you know, clean themselves up
so to speak, by getting rid of body. Here it
also coincides with, you know, the rise of flapper dresses,
so you've got him lines going up sleeves, coming off advertising,
(13:23):
praying on newly created insecurities. And I do really like
that the that the very first Gillette razor for women
was called them Milady decletead Milady. Oh yes. And because
it wasn't until even after that, about a decade later,
that a woman bearing her under arm with her arm
(13:45):
over her head was shown in a magazine for the
first time. I mean, the under arm was a part
of a woman's body that you wouldn't even see, much
less feel that you needed to shave. Whereas today, of course,
if you're a woman who chooses to grow her armpit
hair out, you're considered this total radical who oh certainly
(14:05):
couldn't be, you know, at all interested in men because
you have hair and in two spots on your body,
very small spots from your body. It is funny how
how grooming can be considered such a different types of
grooming can be considered so radical. But Lisa Wade over
at the Society Pages and her blog writes about how
this is sexual objectification of male bodies. This is it's
(14:28):
the same thing that happened to women, it's now happening
to men, and they're using advertisers are using gender ideology
to sort of breed this need to follow directions for
lack of a better term. Yeah, I mean, if you
think about all of the images that you see of
guys in magazines, of famous actors, two movie images also
(14:51):
pop up in my head when I think about this
evolution is quick evolution actually of these uh you know,
telling guys that less the hair is better. You have
Steve Carrell in The Four year Old Virgin getting his
chest whacked waxed because oh he's a virgin, he needs
to have sex, so let's get rid of all of
(15:12):
his unsightly chest hair. Ha ha ha, and it's so funny.
And then fast forward also in a movie with Steve Carrell,
Crazy Stupid Love, where you have Ryan Gosling's character completely
just rippling with muscle and he is not sporting a beard.
He's told there's not a single chest here or back
here insight. And it's just that emblem of this what's
(15:36):
called sanitized ideal of masculinity, where what is hot and
sexy for a man is a lot of rippling muscles
and no hair, which is a far cry from you know,
if you think about back in the day of like
Burt Reynolds lying on the bearskin run. Yes, and we'll
(15:56):
talk more about men's body hair or increasingly the thereof
when we come right back from a quick break and
now back to the show. So before we left you,
we were discussing I'm sorry, what was it? Just Ryan
Gosling's rippling body, That's what we were discussing. And Steve
Curl's chest here. Okay, but like I said, Ryan Gosling's
(16:18):
rippling hairless body. Um, but Ryan Gosling is far from
the only dude to go hairless. I mean way back
in the day. If we're talking ancient Egyptians, they put
a put a premium on men being hairless and ripley
as well. And this is coming from Brown University psychologist
Michael Burrows in his two thousand nine dissertation. He he
(16:42):
talks about men hair removal, gender ideals, all this kind
of stuff, and so he tells us that it is
definitely not a new thing for men to want to
remove or reduce their body hair, and so ancient Egyptian men,
he says would often turn to pumice stones, using pumice
to owns or like crude raisors to remove their body hair.
(17:03):
But somewhere in there, the hairless norm falls out of
favor for men. I'm assuming around the time that Burt
Reynolds really comes up. Burt Reynolds just exploded the whole
like hairless thing, and he was like, no, I'm here,
here my chest hair. He came actually out of the
womb with that mustache, did he? And Tom selleck Man,
My mother loves her some Tom selleck um. And so
(17:26):
basically since then, it's been considered normal only for women
to be hairless. Thank you advertising, thank you cultural norms.
So today, like you said, it's quite common for men
to want to reduce their body hair. And um. So,
Michael Burrows did this research on specifically undergraduate men. That's
important to pay attention to that population because I think
(17:48):
it is sort of a generational shift that we're seeing.
And he found that eighty point nine percent of the
guys that he talked to depolite take off some kind
of hair, not includeing facial hair. And in his research
he focused also a lot on the maintenance of pubic
hair and found, oh, actually a lot of guys are
(18:09):
also trimming their pubic hair. They're trimming their underarm hair. Um,
because previously you had a couple of studies here and there,
like in seven there was this one study that these
sites that explores attitudes about men's body hair, but the
researchers did nothing to look at you know, how many
(18:30):
of them actually remove it because it was such a
norm at the time, and really up until Burrows's research,
the only time you see, um, any kind of acknowledgement
of systematic male body hair removal would have been with
athletic groups like guys, you know, like bikers who might
recyclists i should say, who shave their legs, or swimmers
who shave their bodies. There might be biker gangs with
(18:52):
guys who shave theirs. That's it's a niche, but I'm
sure it exists. Yeah, well yeah, And he found in
his study talk specifically about manscaping the nether regions. He
found that men reported trimming groin hair, whereas forty one
reported actually removing it all together. There was also this
interesting correlation that he found, and this was for both
(19:16):
women and men with the amount of body hair in
a certain you know, physical area, and dissatisfaction with that
body part. So he found that the more hair, for instance,
you have that grows on groin chest arms, the less
people tended to say that they liked their groin chest arms. Interesting. Yeah,
(19:38):
I wonder how dissatisfied the ancient Egyptians were that they
had to use pumice stones to get rid of it,
get it all? How how much would that hurt? Though?
A lot? But okay, So speaking of the groin area,
I mean men are men are out there getting bikini
waxes too. It's not just it's not just the ladies. Um.
The New York Times talked to so of role people
(20:01):
at various spas and things, and Mike and Durski, who's
the president of Bliss Spa, and he says, what we're
finding is it's everybody. It's the gay community, it's the
straight community. It's very conservative guys, it's liberal guys. He
talks about how it's basically all different age groups and backgrounds,
and then it's much much bigger than we ever thought.
And they The New York Times talked to one guy
who said, look, if I have that expectation of somebody
(20:23):
else I would probably want to return the favor. Well,
I have a feeling that that kind of message, at
least according to men at the guys who work at
these spas, who are doling out these bikini waxes, that
message might not just be, you know, kind of of
their own volitions. A lot of times, at least for
(20:44):
stray guys who go in for waxes, it starts out
with a wife or a girlfriend saying, hey, if I
have to clean up, let's talk about your back here.
And then they come back and they become return customers
because apairly they really like it, and they enjoy it,
and they probably get a lot of positive affirmation and
reinforcement from said wife our girlfriend. Um, Whereas I think
(21:08):
maybe with the gay community, it's just more it is
more of a norm, it's a little bit more expected. Um. Well,
going back to Burrows, because he is like the most
recent body hair expert, I would say he talks about
a lot of the reasons behind this. It is a
lot of encouragement from partners, it is societal pressure through
(21:30):
advertising and through magazine covers of ripley hairless bodies. But
one thing he also found was cleanliness is is a
huge push. A lot of people, both men and women,
will cite the desire for cleanliness in both first going
to get waxes and and things like that and then
maintaining them. They feel like they're cleaner being hairless. Yeah,
(21:50):
and I think that ties into the sexuality aspect of this.
I know that if you look at research on women
and pubic hair waxing, that cleanliness is often sided of. Yeah.
I mean there's a whole thing of you know, wanting
to feel sexier and assuming that less hair down there
will make you feel sexier. But it's also tied to
(22:12):
this cleanliness thing that He also ties it to a
desire to look more muscular, uh, to make genitals look bigger,
just to kind of fit in with some mainstream ideal
of what's sexy. And Burrows does site from his various
surveys that a lot of people, a lot of men
are focused on sex appeal and youthfulness. So there's there's
(22:34):
all these interesting like people are striving to look younger, sexy,
or more muscular basically shiny. I don't know somehow shiny
hairlessness equates to to youth I guess yeah, And I
mean I do think that media messages in the same
way that it influences women's body images so often in
our hairless ideal UM. Burrows also talks about how he
(22:59):
says voting some magazine publishers, for example, they'll say there
hasn't been a magazine cover that has displayed a man
with chest hair intend of fifteen years. And all of
these razor companies are also catering to this sanitized ideal
with recent introductions of all of these new kinds of
razors that are specifically designed to trim body here. So
(23:22):
they're getting educated in the same way the razor companies
educated women a hundred years ago to remove everything. Now
we're telling guys back here is just gross. Well. Another
group that Burrows has looked at extensively is bodybuilders, because
you know, there's been a lot of studies on bodybuilders
body dysmorphia, UM, and sort of this masculine ideal that
(23:45):
a lot of body builders tend to have body dysmorphia
so they don't think they're as big as they are,
but also this sort of idea that maybe women want
men who are more muscular than they really do. UM.
But so Burrows in a two thousand five study found
that six percent of the male participants questioned said that
it would disturb them if they were hypothetically unable to
(24:07):
remove their body hair. An additional eighteen percent rated their
anxiety to be in the moderate to extreme range when
asked how they would feel if they could not shave
or trim their body hair for a few weeks. So
that's actual anxiety that's actually tied into like a conscious
mental thing that you're like, I am not gonna look
as good. I'm gonna look terrible if I don't get
(24:29):
rid of this body hair. I have a guy friend
who he's kind of eased up in more recent years,
but especially when he was in his early in mid twenties,
he shaved his chest every summer. He was so embarrassed
of his chest hair, even though it was it was
always baffling to me because I thought that chest hair
was like this manly thing, like I thought guys would
(24:52):
like chest hair. UM. And I also briefly dated a
guy who um too early I was say into dating,
informed me jokingly but not jokingly, that when summer rolls around,
he you know, shaves his back. And he asked me
if I would ever shave his back for him, and
I just I don't even know what I said, um,
(25:15):
because I feel like you could pay people for that. Yeah,
but it was just so odd to me. I was like, well,
you have back hair now, I mean, I just don't.
I don't know. I mean, I get it, like I
can understand. Um. I think it's just it's interesting to
see this kind of male anxiety really coming to the
forefront in an ironic way in this era of beard.
(25:38):
You know what's going on with that. It's like one
there's one specific type of hair on a man that
is okay and sexy, and apparently that is a beard,
and everything else just hairless. Yeah, it's kind of a
funny image, just like a shiny hairless man with just
so much facial massive beard, a Kendall wearing a giant beard. Interesting.
(26:04):
But the thing about I guess social pressures, whether it's
from advertisers and marketers or magazines, media, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Burrows points out, Look, you know, men have the option
to stop. That's very true. It's okay. You might you might,
you know, be dating a guy who is shaving his chest,
waxing his back, you know, trimming this and that, but
(26:25):
it is socially acceptable for him to still have that
hair at the end of the day. Whereas with women,
like we talked about a second ago, like it's it's
considered almost radical if you support body hair. Oh my gosh,
yeah if you. I mean, how many jokes are made about,
you know, women loving the wintertime because no one's going
to see our legs, so we don't have to shave.
(26:46):
But even then it's just like, oh, but if someone
does see our leg hair, then God forbid, will be
cast out, will be cast out. But one thing that
is worth wondering about. So a hun years ago, this all,
all of this conversation was happening about women, women getting
rid of body hair because of advertising creating this demand
(27:07):
for hairlessness basically or or create breeding insecurity because of it. Well,
now now that you have the same thing going on
with men and manscaping and have your beard but don't
have your chest hair or don't have any hair in
your groin. Um, there's all these products that are coming out, Gillette, Braun,
they all have these razors that are marketed specifically as
(27:28):
manscaping razors. So one thing that burrows was wondering too,
is that, you know, are are we seeing maybe a
permanent shift for men the way we had a permanent
shift for women when it comes to removing body hair, right,
Because I don't think we will ever see a full
shift away from women being expected to remove body here.
(27:49):
Although there have been you know, articles talking about how
bikini waxing is, or at least Brazilians removing everything in
the pubic area is not as demanded now for women.
So I don't know. I think we're gonna see shifts
back and forth with that. But for men, I wouldn't
be surprised if this is the beginning of what boys
(28:12):
today will assume is just fact when they you know,
as they grow up and as they start sprouting body hair.
I mean, I have young nephews, and I'm I'm sure
that they're like thinking about all these things because they're
sitting around watching television seeing commercials of guys you know,
taking off all this stuff, and and men with hair
(28:32):
being considered gross on sexy punchlines like Steve Carrell in
Forty Year Old Virgin. Yeah exactly, because that's all that's
all laugh ha ha, funny wink wink. But it's like
it's still now your gross, Like that's still the message. No,
this is gross. This is a guy who women don't
have sex with because he has hair. And I will
say at least for at the very least for women. Uh,
(28:55):
it kind of just makes sense of what you're the rules.
I don't want to say makes sense, but the rules
are very straightforward where it's like, just remove everything and
take all of it, get slightly hair off. But the
now now, like the prescriptions for what men should in
quotes look like is have hair in some places a
(29:16):
little bit, not too much, as long as it's on
not on the back, then nothing at all, you know
what I mean. It's very site specific, and I think
it also maybe says some interesting things about where we
are with twenty one century masculinity. It's sort of in
a similar space of like be masculine, not too much,
(29:39):
only in certain spaces. And I don't know, I'm so
curious to hear from guy listeners on this one. Yeah,
guy listeners, do you feel pressured to remove your body
hair or are you defiantly harry or do you just
not care? Yeah? And if you're a guy who's not harry,
because I think there's still an insecurity for men who can,
(30:00):
you know, grow a beard or might not have a
lot of chest hair. I think there's also still, you know,
insecures on their end of not appearing manly enough. So
I don't know, Guys, what do you think about this?
Are we thinking about it more than you're thinking about it?
Is the New York Times thinking about it more than
you're thinking about it? The answer is yes, regardless. And
(30:21):
if you have impressive facial hair and you want to
send us a picture of your beard, you know we
love beards, so we'll we'll accept those as well. We
really want all of your thoughts on male body hair.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters, and you can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or send us a message on Facebook,
and we have a couple of messages to share with
(30:44):
you right now. So I have an email here from
Kelly in response to our episode on revenge porn, and
she said, I listened to your podcast about revenge porn,
and while I had heard about it before, iting a
bell of more recent events. I'm a reporter at a
newspaper in Utah and remember seeing legislation to criminalize it.
(31:07):
I looked it up and it passed both the House
and the Senate and is awaiting Governor Herbert's signature. While
I would never send pics of myself, I'm so glad
Utah is being forward thinking about this matter. Love your podcast,
especially when you use the term lady bits. So thanks, Kelly,
and that is good to know about Utah passing that legislation.
(31:29):
And hey, also Utah legalizing same sex marriage. Utah, what's
up really moving forward? Okay, Well, speaking of lady things,
I have an email here from Chris. She says, regarding
your March eleventh episode about the words lady and ladies.
When listening to you talk about the need for a
word to refer to a group of women, I couldn't
help but think that there is already a good word
(31:52):
for this in the South. Y'all. Y'all is a gender
neutral collective pronoun that should serve nicely informal situation. The
speaker could revert to the origins of the word and say,
you all examples, what are y'all up to tonight? Or
what are you all doing for your next presentation? What
do you think should we broaden and promote this Southern archaism.
(32:12):
I am totally pro y'all. I'm pro y'all. I say
you all the time. And it confuses my cousins from
up north though, because they don't think I really have
an accent. But then I'll throw a y'all in there
because I can't not. I always say it. Yeah. I
think it's handy for that specific reason. It's all encompassing,
its gender neutral, and it just rolls off the tongue
really really nicely. It does, It sure does. So. Thanks
(32:37):
to all y'all who have written in mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send us your
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It's Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it How
(32:58):
stuff works dot com Three
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you From house supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristin. Today we are talking about hair or
not hair or some hair or a little hair, long hair,
back hair, men hair, men hair, yeah, man hair. I
(00:26):
happened to be very pro man hair. Um. I am
dating someone who has a fantastic beard. It is a
glorious beard. I've seen a Caroline glorious beard. And you
know what, I didn't always prefer beards. It was in
college I would have said no to the beard face.
But I don't know if something happened in my formative
post college years and and now now I am pro beard,
(00:49):
pro beard. Yeah, I am dating a gentleman who is
less hairy, and I love him just the same. I'm
also very pro beard. Um. And but and he gets
a nice little scruff. But no, it is no glorious
beard like your your gentleman's beard. I will say that right.
And um, he does my gentleman. Uh does a little
(01:14):
bit of cleaning up. He does like the barbershop on
occasion to get it to get it shaped. But he's
not big into like a whole lot of man escaping,
And we should say that this episode is not devoted
to beards, but we have to start this conversation off
with the beard, because this rising popularity of men and
(01:35):
their beards is not not not to be confused with
a metaphorical beard as another podcast episode. Uh. This beard popularity, though,
has had a fascinating ripple effect in the male grooming
industry right and in marketing and advertising in general. So
let's talk about this quote unquote trend, shall we um?
(01:56):
And we know it's a trend because a million different
publications have told us that it's a trend, including the
New York Times, who back in January, all the way
back in January of this year reported on beards as
if they were this fancy new thing out of Brooklyn. Yeah,
and all of it sort of kicked off with the
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney coming out for the
(02:20):
first press conference, often sporting a beard. And so the
New York Times says, well, if there are beards in
the White House, then something must be afoot because they
also cited to Lloyd C. Blankfein, who's the Goldman Sex
chief executive, who was wearing a beard at the World
(02:43):
Economic Form and when I say wearing a beard, I
feel like that sounds like it was just like a
scarf that he wrapped around his face. Yeah, or it
had little hooks that hooked behind his ears. Yeah, he
would take off. Yeah. No. Um, even Matt Lower and
l Broker were sporting beards as part of No Shave
Today back in November, as part of the whole November
movement growing your mustache and support of men's health, and um,
(03:06):
it's just funny to see facial hair reported on as
if it's like hot pink stilettos or something like, oh
my goodness, look at what they're wearing. Well. I didn't
do any research into the author that this New York
Times reporter, but I'm curious just in this fascination with
men of great social status sporting beards. I'm wondering if
(03:27):
this reporter was a little bit older, because for our
parents generation, having a beard would have been considered very counterculture. Um,
and now it's you know, this maybe baffling to them
that it's this almost not status symbol, but it's a
cool thing for a guy to have a beard. And
I will say that my favorite phrase also from that
(03:48):
article was quote Duck Dynasty style monstrosity. Well, no, I
will say that the Duck Dynasty beards are monstrosities, and
I risk getting hate mail for this. But those men,
some of those men on that show are are handsome.
The younger men, Yeah, they there's some handsome handsomeness behind
those beards. But yeah, there's a there. There could also
(04:09):
be a lot of things objects hidden within those beards,
judging by Okay, so the days that it's cold outside
and I'm wearing a scarf, judging by the amount of
food crumbs I find in the scarf at the end
of the day, I can only imagine what they find
in their beards. Yes, yes, whole slim gyms, cheese cubes.
But this this beard thing is apparently such a trend.
(04:30):
It is so popular and in style right now that
people are going so far as to get beard implants.
And there aren't any hard numbers around the this rise
and beard transplants, but anecdotally at least, plastic surgeons are
saying that more men and especially men in their twenties
and thirties are coming in plunking down up to eight
(04:53):
hundred dollars for beard transplants. We'll see that's weird. My
question is like, once either this is not a trend
and it's not cool, or you just personally decide you
don't want a beard anymore. Aren't you left with scars?
I mean, I don't know how transplants like that really work. Yeah,
I have no idea there There wasn't that was left
out of all of these reports on beard transplants was
(05:14):
how you know what happens if you don't want that
hair anymore? But speaking of scars, the guy who first
developed this procedure Dr Bess and far Joe over in
the u K. He was the founder of the far
Joe Hair Institute, and he developed this beard transplant particularly
for people who were victims of burns who had a
(05:35):
lot of face scarring, sort of as a way to
cover it up. But now it's just more of a
fashion statement, right And Dr Jeffrey Epstein, who's in Midtown,
Manhattan based plastic surgeon, who was quoted by The New
York Post in February, says that his clients want full
beards because it's a masculine look. Beards are an important
male identifier, so there's that aspect of it. You want
(05:59):
to look manly or but the New York Post itself
referred to this as a hipster inspired style, a lumberjack
meets roady hybrid that was made popular in neighborhoods such
as Williamsburg, Bushwick and Park Slope. So they're very like
hammering down on the fact of it apparently stems from
these certain neighborhoods. Yeah, I mean those are those are
definitely the hipster hotbeds in the Northeast. Um and Epstein
(06:22):
says that he now performs two or three of these
procedures each week, and what they do is take hair
from other body parts like a dude's head or his chest,
and then hair by hair implant it into the face,
which sounds horrendously painful, but again anecdotally, patients seem happy
(06:46):
with it. And there was a follow up article on
this in CNN and they would to wear around to
other hipster hot beds, which made me laugh and reported
that also plastic surgeons in places like Portland's, Austin, Nashville,
and even over in London are are seeing this trend
as well. I thought, I seriously thought this New York
(07:08):
Post article on it was a joke. I seriously did
but then but it is not, and I it just
blows my mind because I don't personally that I know
of I know any guy who would actually go through
with it, because it seems like such an undertaking. I
do know guys who are insecure about their inability to
grow beards. Um. Actually shameless plug for the Smenty YouTube channel,
(07:32):
I did a video recently called the Science of Stubble,
looking at why some guys can't grow beards, because yeah,
I've talked to two friends of I just have patchy
beards or can barely even grow a shadow over their lip,
and so I think that I think there is some
some self consciousness out there because beards are also considered
(07:54):
that sign of outward masculinity, even though Caroline fun fact,
it has nothing to do with your levels of testosterone.
If you cannot grow beard, good to know. I'll keep
that in my back pocket. You remember that, well you growing.
Not being able to grow your beard does not mean
you have LOWD to Okay, that actually might mean um well.
(08:17):
Hopping on this conversation bandwagon is gq um, who declares
that the trend is actually over based on the fact
solely that the New York Times has said the beard
is a trend. G Q says it's no longer a trend.
They're they're mainly making fun of the New York Times article,
but they're pointing out that, Hello, plenty of businessmen both
(08:37):
past and present have sported beards. Yeah, Scott Christian Sites,
Steve jobs, Been, Bernanke, Larry Ellison, uh, former richest man
in the world, Carlos Slim, all these different guys of
you know, prominent stature who have beards, and his headline
kind of stummed it all up. Beards are officially uncool
(08:59):
because the New York Times called them a trend, and
there is I mean, New York trend. Pieces like this
are hilarious because they are often so completely obvious and
make a lot out of what is kind of a
little And he describes them as the media obverse of
Cartesian philosophy. I think therefore I am no longer so.
(09:20):
Once New York Times says something is, then apparently Brooklyn
guys are gonna be running home and grabbing their razors.
It's kind of like the equivalent of my mother getting
on Facebook. Yeah, like okay, all right, all right, um,
but I mean, okay, so so now we're getting into
the whole point, which is this beard trend. Man, it
(09:43):
is hurting razor sales, and a lot of these companies
like Gillette and Braun and other companies like that, are
turning to other options to make their money. Yeah, And
what they're essentially doing is saying, Okay, well, guys aren't
as concerned about shaving their face every day, so what
can we make them more concerned about hair wise so
(10:04):
we can keep selling these razors. Oh yeah, body hair
man scaping right. So according to NPR back in January,
I love it because at the same time as these
beard trend stories are coming out, in PR starts reporting
that Procter and Gamble uh is complaining that this facial
(10:24):
hair trend is hurting their sales and their razor division.
They even Proctor and Gamble even singled out November, which
is the tradition of growing facial hair to promote awareness
of prostate cancer. They even singled that out as part
of the reason why their sales are down. They also
say it's sparked by a shift to disposal razors over
the traditional blade and cartridge systems. But because of all this,
(10:47):
they are turning to manscaping as an answer to declining sales.
And by manscaping, we mean guys shaving things other than
their faces. And um, for a little more specificity, with
Procter and Gambles razors sales, the sale of their Razors
amblades were down seven point eight percent in the twelve
(11:08):
weeks through December twenty one, so that does seem to
correlate perhaps to November. Um. And but their entire grooming division,
which includes razors, shaving cream and deodorant, was actually up
three percent last year. But um, I mean, but that's
not huge numbers, so I don't know. I kind of
wonder how much This is also Procter and Gamble just
sort of taking advantage of the trend to say, oh, yeah, yeah,
(11:32):
we were really scared of beard, so we were selling
all these other things, right, Uh, like this razor sold
by models. Guys. Look, it's Kate Upton. She doesn't like
back hair, right, Yeah, they had they hired Kate Upton
and two other models to basically shill for different types
of Gillette razors, different manscaping things. You know. It's they're like, here,
(11:56):
let's just get some really attractive women on camera to
tell you how this gusting you are to breathe this
insecurity so that you'll buy our products to clean yourself up. Yeah,
And along with these videos of Kate Upton and I
was a little disappointed to see Hannah Simone, who is
on the New Girl UM talking about how guys just
like Nandal's shave I mean, and it really, I'm not
(12:18):
trying to make fun of women. It really was in
the tone of like, I mean, if we shave, Gosh
jev on a spotial of their chests and box and
it's the same kind of insecurities being pedaled to women
of like, ladies, we should shave so guys, male models
(12:40):
will want us, right. And this this definitely is not
a new m O because this is exactly what Gillette
did a hundred years ago to women. Basically, uh, women
were not shaving any more than men were. But in
nineteen fifteen, Gillette created the first razer specifically for women.
But it had to create the market for it. And
(13:02):
so you know, there's all of these this like huge
advertising blitz calling body here unsightly on women, creating this
desire among women to basically, you know, clean themselves up
so to speak, by getting rid of body. Here it
also coincides with, you know, the rise of flapper dresses,
so you've got him lines going up sleeves, coming off advertising,
(13:23):
praying on newly created insecurities. And I do really like
that the that the very first Gillette razor for women
was called them Milady decletead Milady. Oh yes. And because
it wasn't until even after that, about a decade later,
that a woman bearing her under arm with her arm
(13:45):
over her head was shown in a magazine for the
first time. I mean, the under arm was a part
of a woman's body that you wouldn't even see, much
less feel that you needed to shave. Whereas today, of course,
if you're a woman who chooses to grow her armpit
hair out, you're considered this total radical who oh certainly
(14:05):
couldn't be, you know, at all interested in men because
you have hair and in two spots on your body,
very small spots from your body. It is funny how
how grooming can be considered such a different types of
grooming can be considered so radical. But Lisa Wade over
at the Society Pages and her blog writes about how
this is sexual objectification of male bodies. This is it's
(14:28):
the same thing that happened to women, it's now happening
to men, and they're using advertisers are using gender ideology
to sort of breed this need to follow directions for
lack of a better term. Yeah, I mean, if you
think about all of the images that you see of
guys in magazines, of famous actors, two movie images also
(14:51):
pop up in my head when I think about this
evolution is quick evolution actually of these uh you know,
telling guys that less the hair is better. You have
Steve Carrell in The Four year Old Virgin getting his
chest whacked waxed because oh he's a virgin, he needs
to have sex, so let's get rid of all of
(15:12):
his unsightly chest hair. Ha ha ha, and it's so funny.
And then fast forward also in a movie with Steve Carrell,
Crazy Stupid Love, where you have Ryan Gosling's character completely
just rippling with muscle and he is not sporting a beard.
He's told there's not a single chest here or back
here insight. And it's just that emblem of this what's
(15:36):
called sanitized ideal of masculinity, where what is hot and
sexy for a man is a lot of rippling muscles
and no hair, which is a far cry from you know,
if you think about back in the day of like
Burt Reynolds lying on the bearskin run. Yes, and we'll
(15:56):
talk more about men's body hair or increasingly the thereof
when we come right back from a quick break and
now back to the show. So before we left you,
we were discussing I'm sorry, what was it? Just Ryan
Gosling's rippling body, That's what we were discussing. And Steve
Curl's chest here. Okay, but like I said, Ryan Gosling's
(16:18):
rippling hairless body. Um, but Ryan Gosling is far from
the only dude to go hairless. I mean way back
in the day. If we're talking ancient Egyptians, they put
a put a premium on men being hairless and ripley
as well. And this is coming from Brown University psychologist
Michael Burrows in his two thousand nine dissertation. He he
(16:42):
talks about men hair removal, gender ideals, all this kind
of stuff, and so he tells us that it is
definitely not a new thing for men to want to
remove or reduce their body hair, and so ancient Egyptian men,
he says would often turn to pumice stones, using pumice
to owns or like crude raisors to remove their body hair.
(17:03):
But somewhere in there, the hairless norm falls out of
favor for men. I'm assuming around the time that Burt
Reynolds really comes up. Burt Reynolds just exploded the whole
like hairless thing, and he was like, no, I'm here,
here my chest hair. He came actually out of the
womb with that mustache, did he? And Tom selleck Man,
My mother loves her some Tom selleck um. And so
(17:26):
basically since then, it's been considered normal only for women
to be hairless. Thank you advertising, thank you cultural norms.
So today, like you said, it's quite common for men
to want to reduce their body hair. And um. So,
Michael Burrows did this research on specifically undergraduate men. That's
important to pay attention to that population because I think
(17:48):
it is sort of a generational shift that we're seeing.
And he found that eighty point nine percent of the
guys that he talked to depolite take off some kind
of hair, not includeing facial hair. And in his research
he focused also a lot on the maintenance of pubic
hair and found, oh, actually a lot of guys are
(18:09):
also trimming their pubic hair. They're trimming their underarm hair. Um,
because previously you had a couple of studies here and there,
like in seven there was this one study that these
sites that explores attitudes about men's body hair, but the
researchers did nothing to look at you know, how many
(18:30):
of them actually remove it because it was such a
norm at the time, and really up until Burrows's research,
the only time you see, um, any kind of acknowledgement
of systematic male body hair removal would have been with
athletic groups like guys, you know, like bikers who might
recyclists i should say, who shave their legs, or swimmers
who shave their bodies. There might be biker gangs with
(18:52):
guys who shave theirs. That's it's a niche, but I'm
sure it exists. Yeah, well yeah, And he found in
his study talk specifically about manscaping the nether regions. He
found that men reported trimming groin hair, whereas forty one
reported actually removing it all together. There was also this
interesting correlation that he found, and this was for both
(19:16):
women and men with the amount of body hair in
a certain you know, physical area, and dissatisfaction with that
body part. So he found that the more hair, for instance,
you have that grows on groin chest arms, the less
people tended to say that they liked their groin chest arms. Interesting. Yeah,
(19:38):
I wonder how dissatisfied the ancient Egyptians were that they
had to use pumice stones to get rid of it,
get it all? How how much would that hurt? Though?
A lot? But okay, So speaking of the groin area,
I mean men are men are out there getting bikini
waxes too. It's not just it's not just the ladies. Um.
The New York Times talked to so of role people
(20:01):
at various spas and things, and Mike and Durski, who's
the president of Bliss Spa, and he says, what we're
finding is it's everybody. It's the gay community, it's the
straight community. It's very conservative guys, it's liberal guys. He
talks about how it's basically all different age groups and backgrounds,
and then it's much much bigger than we ever thought.
And they The New York Times talked to one guy
who said, look, if I have that expectation of somebody
(20:23):
else I would probably want to return the favor. Well,
I have a feeling that that kind of message, at
least according to men at the guys who work at
these spas, who are doling out these bikini waxes, that
message might not just be, you know, kind of of
their own volitions. A lot of times, at least for
(20:44):
stray guys who go in for waxes, it starts out
with a wife or a girlfriend saying, hey, if I
have to clean up, let's talk about your back here.
And then they come back and they become return customers
because apairly they really like it, and they enjoy it,
and they probably get a lot of positive affirmation and
reinforcement from said wife our girlfriend. Um, Whereas I think
(21:08):
maybe with the gay community, it's just more it is
more of a norm, it's a little bit more expected. Um. Well,
going back to Burrows, because he is like the most
recent body hair expert, I would say he talks about
a lot of the reasons behind this. It is a
lot of encouragement from partners, it is societal pressure through
(21:30):
advertising and through magazine covers of ripley hairless bodies. But
one thing he also found was cleanliness is is a
huge push. A lot of people, both men and women,
will cite the desire for cleanliness in both first going
to get waxes and and things like that and then
maintaining them. They feel like they're cleaner being hairless. Yeah,
(21:50):
and I think that ties into the sexuality aspect of this.
I know that if you look at research on women
and pubic hair waxing, that cleanliness is often sided of. Yeah.
I mean there's a whole thing of you know, wanting
to feel sexier and assuming that less hair down there
will make you feel sexier. But it's also tied to
(22:12):
this cleanliness thing that He also ties it to a
desire to look more muscular, uh, to make genitals look bigger,
just to kind of fit in with some mainstream ideal
of what's sexy. And Burrows does site from his various
surveys that a lot of people, a lot of men
are focused on sex appeal and youthfulness. So there's there's
(22:34):
all these interesting like people are striving to look younger, sexy,
or more muscular basically shiny. I don't know somehow shiny
hairlessness equates to to youth I guess yeah, And I
mean I do think that media messages in the same
way that it influences women's body images so often in
our hairless ideal UM. Burrows also talks about how he
(22:59):
says voting some magazine publishers, for example, they'll say there
hasn't been a magazine cover that has displayed a man
with chest hair intend of fifteen years. And all of
these razor companies are also catering to this sanitized ideal
with recent introductions of all of these new kinds of
razors that are specifically designed to trim body here. So
(23:22):
they're getting educated in the same way the razor companies
educated women a hundred years ago to remove everything. Now
we're telling guys back here is just gross. Well. Another
group that Burrows has looked at extensively is bodybuilders, because
you know, there's been a lot of studies on bodybuilders
body dysmorphia, UM, and sort of this masculine ideal that
(23:45):
a lot of body builders tend to have body dysmorphia
so they don't think they're as big as they are,
but also this sort of idea that maybe women want
men who are more muscular than they really do. UM.
But so Burrows in a two thousand five study found
that six percent of the male participants questioned said that
it would disturb them if they were hypothetically unable to
(24:07):
remove their body hair. An additional eighteen percent rated their
anxiety to be in the moderate to extreme range when
asked how they would feel if they could not shave
or trim their body hair for a few weeks. So
that's actual anxiety that's actually tied into like a conscious
mental thing that you're like, I am not gonna look
as good. I'm gonna look terrible if I don't get
(24:29):
rid of this body hair. I have a guy friend
who he's kind of eased up in more recent years,
but especially when he was in his early in mid twenties,
he shaved his chest every summer. He was so embarrassed
of his chest hair, even though it was it was
always baffling to me because I thought that chest hair
was like this manly thing, like I thought guys would
(24:52):
like chest hair. UM. And I also briefly dated a
guy who um too early I was say into dating,
informed me jokingly but not jokingly, that when summer rolls around,
he you know, shaves his back. And he asked me
if I would ever shave his back for him, and
I just I don't even know what I said, um,
(25:15):
because I feel like you could pay people for that. Yeah,
but it was just so odd to me. I was like, well,
you have back hair now, I mean, I just don't.
I don't know. I mean, I get it, like I
can understand. Um. I think it's just it's interesting to
see this kind of male anxiety really coming to the
forefront in an ironic way in this era of beard.
(25:38):
You know what's going on with that. It's like one
there's one specific type of hair on a man that
is okay and sexy, and apparently that is a beard,
and everything else just hairless. Yeah, it's kind of a
funny image, just like a shiny hairless man with just
so much facial massive beard, a Kendall wearing a giant beard. Interesting.
(26:04):
But the thing about I guess social pressures, whether it's
from advertisers and marketers or magazines, media, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Burrows points out, Look, you know, men have the option
to stop. That's very true. It's okay. You might you might,
you know, be dating a guy who is shaving his chest,
waxing his back, you know, trimming this and that, but
(26:25):
it is socially acceptable for him to still have that
hair at the end of the day. Whereas with women,
like we talked about a second ago, like it's it's
considered almost radical if you support body hair. Oh my gosh,
yeah if you. I mean, how many jokes are made about,
you know, women loving the wintertime because no one's going
to see our legs, so we don't have to shave.
(26:46):
But even then it's just like, oh, but if someone
does see our leg hair, then God forbid, will be
cast out, will be cast out. But one thing that
is worth wondering about. So a hun years ago, this all,
all of this conversation was happening about women, women getting
rid of body hair because of advertising creating this demand
(27:07):
for hairlessness basically or or create breeding insecurity because of it. Well,
now now that you have the same thing going on
with men and manscaping and have your beard but don't
have your chest hair or don't have any hair in
your groin. Um, there's all these products that are coming out, Gillette, Braun,
they all have these razors that are marketed specifically as
(27:28):
manscaping razors. So one thing that burrows was wondering too,
is that, you know, are are we seeing maybe a
permanent shift for men the way we had a permanent
shift for women when it comes to removing body hair, right,
Because I don't think we will ever see a full
shift away from women being expected to remove body here.
(27:49):
Although there have been you know, articles talking about how
bikini waxing is, or at least Brazilians removing everything in
the pubic area is not as demanded now for women.
So I don't know. I think we're gonna see shifts
back and forth with that. But for men, I wouldn't
be surprised if this is the beginning of what boys
(28:12):
today will assume is just fact when they you know,
as they grow up and as they start sprouting body hair.
I mean, I have young nephews, and I'm I'm sure
that they're like thinking about all these things because they're
sitting around watching television seeing commercials of guys you know,
taking off all this stuff, and and men with hair
(28:32):
being considered gross on sexy punchlines like Steve Carrell in
Forty Year Old Virgin. Yeah exactly, because that's all that's
all laugh ha ha, funny wink wink. But it's like
it's still now your gross, Like that's still the message. No,
this is gross. This is a guy who women don't
have sex with because he has hair. And I will
say at least for at the very least for women. Uh,
(28:55):
it kind of just makes sense of what you're the rules.
I don't want to say makes sense, but the rules
are very straightforward where it's like, just remove everything and
take all of it, get slightly hair off. But the
now now, like the prescriptions for what men should in
quotes look like is have hair in some places a
(29:16):
little bit, not too much, as long as it's on
not on the back, then nothing at all, you know
what I mean. It's very site specific, and I think
it also maybe says some interesting things about where we
are with twenty one century masculinity. It's sort of in
a similar space of like be masculine, not too much,
(29:39):
only in certain spaces. And I don't know, I'm so
curious to hear from guy listeners on this one. Yeah,
guy listeners, do you feel pressured to remove your body
hair or are you defiantly harry or do you just
not care? Yeah? And if you're a guy who's not harry,
because I think there's still an insecurity for men who can,
(30:00):
you know, grow a beard or might not have a
lot of chest hair. I think there's also still, you know,
insecures on their end of not appearing manly enough. So
I don't know, Guys, what do you think about this?
Are we thinking about it more than you're thinking about it?
Is the New York Times thinking about it more than
you're thinking about it? The answer is yes, regardless. And
(30:21):
if you have impressive facial hair and you want to
send us a picture of your beard, you know we
love beards, so we'll we'll accept those as well. We
really want all of your thoughts on male body hair.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters, and you can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or send us a message on Facebook,
and we have a couple of messages to share with
(30:44):
you right now. So I have an email here from
Kelly in response to our episode on revenge porn, and
she said, I listened to your podcast about revenge porn,
and while I had heard about it before, iting a
bell of more recent events. I'm a reporter at a
newspaper in Utah and remember seeing legislation to criminalize it.
(31:07):
I looked it up and it passed both the House
and the Senate and is awaiting Governor Herbert's signature. While
I would never send pics of myself, I'm so glad
Utah is being forward thinking about this matter. Love your podcast,
especially when you use the term lady bits. So thanks, Kelly,
and that is good to know about Utah passing that legislation.
(31:29):
And hey, also Utah legalizing same sex marriage. Utah, what's
up really moving forward? Okay, Well, speaking of lady things,
I have an email here from Chris. She says, regarding
your March eleventh episode about the words lady and ladies.
When listening to you talk about the need for a
word to refer to a group of women, I couldn't
help but think that there is already a good word
(31:52):
for this in the South. Y'all. Y'all is a gender
neutral collective pronoun that should serve nicely informal situation. The
speaker could revert to the origins of the word and say,
you all examples, what are y'all up to tonight? Or
what are you all doing for your next presentation? What
do you think should we broaden and promote this Southern archaism.
(32:12):
I am totally pro y'all. I'm pro y'all. I say
you all the time. And it confuses my cousins from
up north though, because they don't think I really have
an accent. But then I'll throw a y'all in there
because I can't not. I always say it. Yeah. I
think it's handy for that specific reason. It's all encompassing,
its gender neutral, and it just rolls off the tongue
really really nicely. It does, It sure does. So. Thanks
(32:37):
to all y'all who have written in mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com is where you can send us your
letters and for links to all of our other social
media contacts, podcast blogs, and videos. There's one place to go.
It's Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it How
(32:58):
stuff works dot com Three
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