Dry July - The Guts

Things that will most certainly happen while you play at being a non-drinker for the month of Dry-July.

• You will still wake up with headaches. I can only put this down to dehydration. Ever since I caught my pesky cat lapping from the glass of water I always have beside my bed; I’m afraid to. I know caring is sharing but there is Toxoplasmosis to consider. I mean if you think YOUR cat is too posh to lick its bum you’re mistaken. (1)
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• If you are not a morning person, you will still not be a morning person. (2)
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• Your brain will not suddenly become full of amazingly unique and stunningly creative ideas wandering along yet unused synapses and culminating in you giving a futuristic TED talk resulting in a multimillion dollar book deal. Although it may be a little clearer. (3)
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• Friends will be more put out than you that you are not drinking and will offer helpful advice like, - ‘you could have ONE’. Or, ‘it’s nearly the end of July’. (4)
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• The first four days are the hardest. Stay strong. (I REALLY wanted to suggest to The H on the first night that we ought to swill the already opened half full bottle of Pinot Noir. Only because it would have gone so nicely with the pasta Puttanesca with lashings of parmesan I was making - of course. But who wants to look like the weak one? Instead, I saved myself and the vino by putting it in the next nights venison casserole – alcohol evaporates during cooking. No worries.) (5)
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• You will not lose weight. In order to make up for the calories you are suddenly lacking (a 100ml glass of white wine = 400 calories), you will eat truckloads of high calorie puddings because you deserve them. 5 nights in I made a 9 egg, 400gram dark chocolate mousse. Last night I made a 6 egg lemon cake with lemon syrup drizzle, guided down my gullet with coconut yoghurt and runny cream. (6)
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• After one week you will be in the habit of having a lime and soda, instead of an alcoholic beverage of an evening. They’re both sugary after all.(7)
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•  If you’re lucky your hair may have growth spurt. I’m talking the hair on your head, not your eyebrows, mo or beard. You have to envisage enjoying kale and chia seed smoothies for this to happen mind. (8)
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• Don’t expect to be lauded for you excellent role modeling because the teenage members of the household whom you think you are setting a-fine-example-for will not notice you are stone cold SOBER. Yep two weeks in, my three sprogs were none the wiser. (9)
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• You will NOT have to consider your evenings drinking regime, when taxi-ing teenagers to and from parties. This part is very liberating and you might wonder why you drink and drive within the limits of the law on these nights at all. (10)
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• You will not feel relaxed in the evenings. So you may want to take up meditation or go to evening sessions of pilates. Tick. Better still, take up a foreign language, embroider a quilt for your new great grandnephew or take up sheepskin moccasin making classes at your community college. Because you will be wide awake 2 hours passed your normal had-a-wine-I’m-quite-sleepy bedtime. (11)
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• Despite going to bed a lot later you will wake early. Smack on five o clock for the first week. Use your time productively. Checking in the mirror to note that the whites of your eyes are definitely whiter. Or that the longer breed of eyelashes you’re farming by way of Lash Amplifier is working, is not productive. (12)
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• Three weeks in you will be as bored with your partner as he/she is with you. You will probably at this point also count how many Fridays you have left where you won't be able to wind down with wine time and remain awake through the whole Friday night DVD session. (13)
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•  You will probably plan what you are going to drink on Friday 1^st August, well before Friday 1^st August. I fancy a sip of bubbly. Thanks. Although, I know part of me after five weeks, will feel like I did when I was pregnant and want to remain sober for eternity in order to protect my hard working organs and internal bits. (14)

 

NB: Dry July is in its 7^th year and was started to raise money for adults living with cancer. The writer, a moderate drinker, did not knock on her neighbours’ doors and ask for sponsors for her period of sobriety. That would have made being alcohol free for five weeks like an excruciatingly long Forty Hour Famine. A 936 hour famine to be precise (she started on 23/6). The boredom from being in a state sameness is pressure enough.

She did however donate some doe-rae-mee to - The Breast Cancer Foundation of New Zealand - in celebration of her friend Michelle being five years clear. YAY.

 If you want to get involved press the pink button 

And if any Dry July-ers  want to add to this list feel free to do so in the comments section.

Salut!

Pube Peace, an essay

Just like good old teenage pash-rash the, pubes-on - pubes-off debate seems to be never-ending. A lot of column inches have been spent trying to explain the current necessity for the sexually active population to remove pubic hair. I’ve read them all and grilled many beauticians, yet I still feel like an ignor-ray-mons.

I have regular lower leg waxes but never in my life have I had a bikini wax, let alone a Brazilian or a Hollywood. 

I have however, endured hours of electrolysis of my bikini line back in the mid 80’s. Was it painful? YES. Unsightly post treatment? YES. Think plucked chicken, add blood. After each session raw follicles were swabbed with meths to help scabs form, then said scabs were dabbed with ointment to stop scabs falling off and scarring. The end result, after a year  was a clean bikini line. And possibly a compromised nervous system. 

Around about the same time my sister was trying to sell a boxful of Brazilian bikini bottoms she’d purchased in South America. Oddly these skimpy, ruched, elastic-less cheek revealing, crack riding thongs, albeit colourful, were not a hit with kiwi lasses. Looking back, it’s obvious why their native wearers chose to have a Brazilian. Wax.

When I was in the peer pressure zone, doing-exactly-what-my-teenage-school-friends-did, not much hair removal took place. Many a hairy lower leg poked out from our brown gingham shifts and the closest we got to treating our pubes was giving them a good dollop of conditioner in order to keep their seaweed lengths silky (thanks to fellow boarder Kate for that tip). If they stuck out the side of our speedos on sports day I don’t remember. 

Not that I haven’t been tempted to TRY wax. Down there. I know delectable matrons of a similar age who sport sporty strips and clear landing gear. So I tried A DIY box-job last Valentine’s day, a cheap treat for the H. However, in your own boudoir with your teenage daughters screeching, ‘OMG Mum!’ Bent over your own van-wah, wondering how to place a sticky wax strip, with your skin in a less than suitable state. Not taut. I worried the whole lot was going to come away in me hands. And as for my caesarian scar that’s one line I don’t want to cross. Or see. Neat though it is, it’s my Plimsoll line. So I wiped the wax off and admitted defeat. I only wanted to have a go at the top bit. Anyway.

I have dabbled in trimming over the years. In fact, I have a patent pending on titillating-tush-topiary. I’ve fashioned: The box, the zebra crossing, the landing strip, the gift bow, the ‘E’, the heart, the lightning strike. Even an origami pelican. Kidding. All with nail scissors. Effortless pube-scaping. Regrowth free. Fun Saturday DIY job. Always completed. 

I’m not the only one. Tom Ford, ran a controversial Gucci ad, in 2003, with a woman revealing pubic hair fashioned into a 'G'. Mons couture.  Nowadays, there are websites that help you create your own stencils. The Beaver. The peacock.  The peace sign.

BUT how did this totally hair-free lady garden fashion of the 2000s come about? Most say it’s because of the advent of ridiculously small underwear and low riding everything, further perpetuated by the porn industry. My interest in it goes as far as trying to curtail my own teenage daughters from ever buying into this zone of expensive never-ending depilatory torture. Most mums would understand it’s tragic enough when our daughters start shaving baby leg fuzz off at 10 - on a daily basis. Let alone being brainwashed into thinking they need to keep themselves in a pube-free pre-pubescent state. FOREVER. Yet it seems a generation of young women just feel cleaner hairless. It’s their normal.

Back in the 1400s women shaved their pubic hair to combat pubic lice. Then they donned a wig, by way of calico straps. A merkin. Sounds like a cute furry animal. I’ve wanted to sight a merkin since the age of 11 when my parents and their friends discussed them one Friday night while rolling about the floor laughing hysterically. Prostitutes wore merkins to cover up signs of disease such as syphilis. I recently saw a modern day adhesive merkin in lurid pink, it offered to make you look good when your re-growth wasn’t. Bad hair day of the cruelest kind. Eek.

Early art depicted women without rugs (which we know never match the curtains, but are FYI mostly the same colour as eyebrows). Take: La Naissance de Venus by Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Duval (1808–1885) for example. The goddess of love is a vision of womanliness yet has no pubic or armpit hair.

I don’t remember ever feeling dirty as I welcomed in every single pube I managed to procure. It was a reward, a badge of my much awaited ticket to women hood and all its worldliness. 

Most young women today shave their bits smooth simply because regular waxing is out of their price range, at up to $80 a six weekly visit. Some do it in the bath. Tip: wash and condition first. Do not go against the growth go with it, as if you were shaving your beard.

Then there are the AFTER AFFECTS no-one seems to want to fess up about. The realities of regrowth in your nether regions. Anyone who has waxed anything will know that a week post wax those pesky hair follicles are bursting with new growth. New growth urgent to pierce through that lovely smooth skin you’ve been given a week to enjoy. It hurts. A painful prickly pressure builds. God knows what that feels like tucked into your knickers, pressing into your tender bits. Chaffing. Raw. But no one says. You do hear the odd thing like, “I had an ingrown hair that got so infected I had to go on antibiotics. It left a huge scar.” Urgggh.  And what about stubble-downtime? Perhaps Brazilians are curtailing promiscuity? 

According to, Emily Gibson MD, "Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles left behind, leaving microscopic open wounds…It is not at all unusual to find pustules and other hair follicle inflammation…”

Aside from feeling cleaner, another reason for de-fluffing the fur burger is consideration for partners. “… You know, so he doesn’t get a pube stuck between his teeth when he gives me oral”.  

However, this poses another question: why the full beards on a large percentage of muff diving males. Heavens to merkin-troyd. Those short and curlies have jumped ship. Merkin overboard.  Tickle torture.

Yet pressure is not only on girls. Spare a thought for the young men trying to grow beards to keep a pace with hipster fashion and in some cases make themselves look older.  My dad was a naval officer in the 60’s, as the story goes if the men in his charge could not grow a presentable beard within three weeks it was - off with your beard. Nowadays, men who can only manage a marmite-smear-of-a-beard or moustache are heading to New York facial hair transplant clinics and forking out up to $US8,000 to fill in the gaps. At least in the future if they decide to go beard free they can just shave.

At the same time some young women are heading to their IPL Consultant and having permanent Brazilians. This got me thinking about, **Dr Seuss and Sylvester McMonkey McBeen’s, Star-On Star-Off machine. Merkin-forebid. These women need to read the story of the Star Bellied Sneetches pretty dam quick. Otherwise sometime in the future they’ll be paying a plastic surgeon to get their furry-curtains restored. While the ad men, the marketers, the razor manufacturers and the hair-on hair-off brigade are running all the way to the bank.

Cameron Diaz spoke out about IPL in her latest book, "…Consider leaving your vagina fully dressed, ladies. Twenty years from now, you will still want to be presenting it to someone special, and it would be nice to let him or her unwrap it like the gift that it is." Diaz also got pretty verbal about lady gardens on a recent Graham Norton Show and spent quite a time shouting hello up her dress, which could have been a belt. ‘Why ARE you there? Why ARE you there?’ 

The answer to that question is: pubic hair provides cushioning and reduces friction (during all activities). Gigolo screen hairdresser, Borat can attest to that, having ze busiest bounciest bush in the business. 

Rebel retailer, American Apparel is doing its pro-pube-bit, displaying mannequins with pubes in sheer underwear. Pubes so wonky and well, just plain bushy they reminded me of what my sister and I termed brunhilders, while holidaying in Portugal in aforementioned Brazilian bikinis many moons ago. Pubes that ran up to the navel like rampant vagina creeper. 

Aside from Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow happily claims to rock a 70’s vibe. And 80's doyen of the dance floor, Madonna, has been sporting full armpit hair (although to me it looks fake).  In keeping with, hairy = confidence, you can now get order up a, Full Bush Brazilian next time you’re lying prone on the wax table. Full garden out front, clean lips and butt crack, I quote, from the New York Mag. Like keeping the curtains drawn, but the venetians up. The retro wax. The foo-foo mullet. The why-bother. Just let it grow.

Even so, this may herald a new beginning. Banished will be the boys who grow up only seeing their mums with pubes. Son 11, shields his eyes if he sees me pant-less, like some UFO with a spot light is about to land – I’d hate to think how he’d react to the full monty mons. If pubes-on becomes the-new-sexy, he won’t have to.

And boys don’t be too worried if you can’t grow a beard. You could try a berkin. I’m sure Adam Sand was wearing one in the, ‘Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, it did look like he had a small animal glued on his chin pretending to be a beard. According to recently beard-free, Bee Gees Star Barry Gibb, ‘the beard pulls all your muscles down, so it’s not pretty if you shave. Every time I see Brad Pitt with that beard, I think. Better cut it before it’s too late.’

God gave you a triangle of hairs girls, cut the edges, trim them, make them into pretty shapes if you will. Just keep em. Let’s bring sexy back to pubes. At the end of the day no one wants pubes in their teeth, but is it really worth all that pain. Peace out.

Post script: I conducted a small survey, via facebook messenger last night, amongst a random international selection of early 20somethings. You might be surprised to hear what their spokeswoman had to report.

“... A lot of my friends have stopped waxing or at least are doing it less often, a lot of the guys we are friends with have no preference as to whether a girl waxes or not. So mostly the girls are just doing it for themselves, or out of habit. As for guys and beards, those of my friends that can grow them do and those who can't might wish they could but are happy enough either way. It seems it’s still a person to person preference that’s the deciding factor behind it although, some (both male and female) simply do it because their friends do, their partners want them to or most commonly because they think it’s ‘the norm’.”

**‘Belly stars are no long in style,’ said McBean.

‘What you need is a trip through my Star-Off machine.

This wondrous contraption will take off your stars

so you won’t look like Sneetches who have them on thars.”

…And that handy machine working very precisely

Removed all the stars from their tummies quite nicely…

Then, when every last cent of their money was spent,

The Fix-It-Up Chappie packed up. And he went.

And he laughed as he drove in his care up the beach,

‘They never will learn. No. You can’t Teach a Sneetch!’

(from: The Sneetches, by Dr Seuss)

I'll Be Down at the Mall

I was on my back to the motel. Striding along the polished linoleum, head down, jacket zipped ready to brace the wind through the automatic glass doors beyond. I was approached from the left. I stopped. Fool. One dab of free hand cream turned into a sales pitch nightmare. 

‘Come come, give me five minutes,’ she implored.

I got the nail buff. ‘This takes out the ridges that make your nails crack and split.’

My fingernails grow like horses’ hooves; I clip them back once a week. They never crack.

‘See this dry skin?’ (healthy cuticle) ‘One drop of this, oil and poof it’s gone.’

‘What kind of oil is that?’ I’m sold on the merits of argan, rosehip and avocado.

‘All our products come from the Dead Sea in Israel. All natural oils.’ 

Debatable geography.

She stood too close to me. In my space. ‘My mother’s a great cook. But she cooks, then she leaves. Others clean up after her. I think you’re the same?’

‘No I’m a pretty tidy cook,’ I said feebly. The ‘we have things in common ploy’. Mmmm.

She dabbed nail polish remover proving the, shine was-not-an-illusion, over my buffed nails. 

‘Today a special price for you.’ She held the boxed magic nail set in her hand. ‘First pack $99.99, second pack $99.99 but today only, third pack free.’

$100 bucks for a nail buffer. ‘No thanks.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I grow flowers.’ 

‘You live on a farm? I don’t believe it. You don’t look after your nails? But why, you look after everything else. Look at you. Treat yourself. Today only, 1^st pack $99.99 and second pack free.’

Golly that's what I call on the spot discounting. I turned to leave.

‘Go on treat yourself.’

‘I have. I just bought a pair of sunglasses.’ Splashed out. Le Specs, could be Karen Walker but only $69.00. ‘Do you sell a lot?’

‘Yes lots of people buy three packs for Christmas presents.’

I idly dug dirt out from under my fingernails. ‘Look, great sales pitch but I’m not buying anything.’ 

Water off a ducks back.

Nec minnit, she had me sat down on a stool. I’m sure one of her thighs was on the outside of mine, wedging me in. What was going on? I don’t suffer fools or salespeople. But this young woman had cornered me with her endless spiel and aside from making a run for it I was stuck. She was a hungry snake charmer. 

Surely there must be a yellow vested security guy hovering somewhere to tell her TIMES UP. Don’t mess with the shoppers. If they’re not buying, they don’t want it.

‘I’m going to Queenstown next week,’ she said, cheerily. ‘What should I do?’

I ran off a list of high risk adrenaline infused activities. 

‘I leave it to the boys to decide.’

Hells bells the whole kit and kibbutz-oodle was in Christchurch flogging the Dead Sea promise. I hope they have work permits, are getting paid properly and their bosses aren't ripping off the IRD. Should I inform John Key or the MP for Riccarton?

Something just didn’t feel right. I’m all for free trade, but shouldn’t we be promoting Rotorua Mud Minerals in our malls. Not imported, non FDA (or equivalent approved) Dead Sea cosmetics. Hardly carbon neutral.

I clutched my handbag to my bosom as her brown eyes bore into mine. She was not at all deterred by my stubbornness and refusal to get out my credit card. She thought she could break me. She got a little patronizing. ‘Now tell me which finger do we apply our eye makeup with?’

I was tempted to flip her the bird but it would have gone up her nostril. Her thick wavy hair fell forwards as she rubbed in liberal amounts of the magic eye gel. I took note in the magnified mirror for the before and after affect. 

Immediately my eyes started to tighten. Must have been all that salt drawing out the puff and bag, like she said. I have to admit it did seem to reduce my crow’s feet. But I wasn’t exactly smiling. 

Then she hit me with the price. ‘$279.00 for 30mls,’ and started raving on how long it would last.

‘It’s 30 mls?’ I said. ‘Three months max.’

‘Have you travelled the world?’ she said. ‘Now I’m putting on the eye cream.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Europe, Africa, Asia.’

‘My country?’

‘No.’ 

 

‘Are you going to travel to my country?’

‘No, it’s not a country on my list.’ I said politely. ‘Look, you’ve worked really hard. But I’m not going to buy anything. And I really must go.’

‘I need to get your trust,’ she said. 

God then she came on a bit strong. ‘Look, you’re beautiful. I want to help you.’

‘Yeah aging sucks doesn’t it.’ She was 29.

‘Look at these pictures. I’m not on commission you know? I’m the manager.’ Out came her I-phone and some heavily photo-shopped before and afters. 

‘No,’ I repeated. She stood up. Now was my chance. Still clutching my handbag I rose. Thirty minutes must have past. 

‘I want to give you something.’

‘Please don’t. Look I’ll take some samples but I have to go, my daughter’s worried about me (she’d just texted). Her and me both.

She fiddled round on her computer. That cloudy sky and those automatic doors tantalizingly close. I thought she was going to give me a couple of sachets and release me. 

‘I can give you today 50% off. I’m not here tomorrow.’

‘No thanks,’ I turned to go. My face twitched annoyance and she was starting to look pissed off too. She had one last go. 

‘Just today I’ll sell you the nail pack for $49.99, that’s 50% off.’

I turned and walked away. Hoping I’d never see her again. 

Note: Freaky shopping experience aside, it appears the Dead Sea products are highly controversial and political from what I read in these articles: Dead Sea Sales Scam NZ , Israel Accused Dead Sea Occupied 

I would read these links if you’re contemplating purchasing any Dead Sea Products. I for one will be sticking to made in NZ brands.