Hair

Hair is funny stuff. Depending on whose it is, and where it is, it is either desirable or undesirable. When I was young, we had plaits or pigtails, and no girl had anything shorter than a bob. On the other hand, until the Beatles came along, men with long hair were considered foppish and effeminate, and the crew cut and short back and sides were the norm. That's all changed.

Completely bald women are still something of a rarity, but they do exist, and like Gail Porter, they can be just as beautiful as women with long hair. I can't be alone in thinking that Jessie J looked hotter after she'd had her head shaved for Comic Relief than before. It wouldn't suit all of us, but it can look very sexy. Remember Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3?

Men more often have shaved heads, probably because nature robs them of the hair on their heads anyway, and as with women, it doesn't suit all of them. Bruce Willis and Patrick Stewart look great, but there's always a danger that the shaven headed man could look like a thug.

Men with beards are apparently considered manly, but I've never really understood the attraction of all that coarse facial hair, and designer stubble is even worse, like kissing a hairbrush. Give me a smooth face any day.

Moving away from the head, hair becomes even more controversial. Men almost never shave their armpits, and women mostly do. Not all women, of course, but if we think someone might see, we generally tidy up. Much the same goes for legs. There is a feminist view that we shouldn't shave our body hair, or pluck our eyebrows, but if you're going to go down that road, why bother with pretty clothes, either? If I think I look and feel better with sleek shins, I'm going to keep waxing, and if my eyebrows decide they'd like to meet in the middle, I'll keep plucking.

I don't much like hairy chests, either. A few silky hairs are nice, but the tangle of fibres that is supposed to constitute manliness reminds me of nothing as much as a doormat. Give me Jacob over Esau every time.

And so to the pubes. Female porn stars seem routinely to shave theirs, along with a few of the men, which seems a shame. I enjoy having my pubic hair pulled, gently, a few hairs at a time, one way and then the other. You can move the skin without touching it. I have a friend who has a few fine hairs around his nipples, and he enjoys having them tugged, in much the same way. The hairs around my nipples are so short that he'd need tweezers and a magnifying glass, but if they were longer I can see that I'd like it too.

As I've grown older, I've gone greyer. The hair on my head is dyed. If I let it grow out, I'd probably look like a road, with a white line down the middle. I don't bother with my underarms as often as I used to. My pubic hair has spread out, sparser in the middle than it used to be, and spreading to the tops of my thighs. If I ever want to wear a swimsuit again, I'll wax it, but for the moment, I'm happy for it to sprawl. There's more to pull.