Surely the question is, what pressures do people feel? I'm male, and I don't shave anything. The second time I took a razor to my face I went, nope, this is not for me, and now the most I do is (slightly grudgingly) to use scissors every few weeks to keep my moustache out of my tea. Here in San Jose, to my pleasant surprise, this seems to be acceptable; the northern-European-looking people here don't seem to mind much, and most other people seem to range from interested to enthusiastic. But in Montreal, where I lived until recently, people would shout at me on the street. So routinely so that I've had friends comment that it makes them uncomfortable.
Well, I've had that all my adult life, and if they can't see the value in me, that's their loss and (I strongly suspect) my gain. I have my own friends. But that said, it's a degree of social pressure that I don't think anyone should need to withstand for something that does so little harm to others, and the fact that almost all men do shave their faces (whether in whole or in part) when it is such an unpleasant thing to do makes it pretty clear that the psychological effect is, well, effective.
So I don't feel it's inconsistent that I can be impressed by artistic feats of facial topiary, feel it completely acceptable if someone wants, of their own free will, to be clean-shaven, and at the same time be extremely disturbed by the clear statistical evidence that everyone is getting their minds messed with.
And as above, so below.
(And a hundred times more so for the parts with nerve endings, and the ones that won't grow back.)
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Date: 2008-07-01 03:30 am (UTC)Well, I've had that all my adult life, and if they can't see the value in me, that's their loss and (I strongly suspect) my gain. I have my own friends. But that said, it's a degree of social pressure that I don't think anyone should need to withstand for something that does so little harm to others, and the fact that almost all men do shave their faces (whether in whole or in part) when it is such an unpleasant thing to do makes it pretty clear that the psychological effect is, well, effective.
So I don't feel it's inconsistent that I can be impressed by artistic feats of facial topiary, feel it completely acceptable if someone wants, of their own free will, to be clean-shaven, and at the same time be extremely disturbed by the clear statistical evidence that everyone is getting their minds messed with.
And as above, so below.
(And a hundred times more so for the parts with nerve endings, and the ones that won't grow back.)