I was lying by myself in bed tonight, trying in vain to get some sleep (different, but not so much better, than, "I was lying to myself in bed tonight, trying to get some sleep") when I felt an itch. As I often do (knowing that itches are rarely caused by spiders about to bite me) I ignored the itch. When a similar itch popped up, it led me down a line of thinking that resulted in this blog.
More on the itches later.
People who hang out with me know that I am willing to look pretty... odd when I go out. I do it not to make people laugh, necessarily, and not because I think it makes me look particularly good, but because I try different things and see whether I can do it without feeling self-conscious.
I wear white jeans sometimes. I've purchased and worn in public (albeit only three times) stretchy green denim pants. I go out with guyliner on occasionally. I rarely worry about whether I've shaved recently and I am willing to do different things with my hair.
There are lines, though, that I won't cross in terms of appearance. Two of the lines were pretty obvious to me before tonight, but the third only emerged why my (emerging, weak-ass) beard itched as I tried to power through a bout of slight insomnia and get some sleep.
Tattoos
Let me preface this by saying: I know tattoos are a personal choice, and please remember that my opinions on the topic are not intended as an affront to my inked-up buddies.
I can not see myself getting a tattoo. Ever. I have never seen a tattoo and thought that it was something that would look good on me. I have never read a quote or line of prose that has affected me to the point where I would consider putting it on my body. I memorized φ out to 10 significant digits, but while it might have been more convenient to get it tattooed on my left forearm, I would never do so.
Let me go onto say that I have never looked at a woman and found her more attractive because of a tattoo. When I was a younger man, tattoos on women struck me as dirty... not in the naughty sense, but in the "I want to take a sponge and scrub that shit off" sense. Now, when an attractive woman has any number of tattoos, I have grown emotionally (?) to the point where I could still want to do her. Because she is, after all, attractive.
Thank goodness for emotional growth, huh?
I will generalize my apathy (and, perhaps, underlying antipathy) for tattoos by saying I've never looked at a person with a tattoo and thought they looked smarter for the tattoo work. A pair of glasses? Sure, they can look smarter. A British accent? Absolutely. A tattoo? No.
Of course, tattoos weren't created to help me like the people that receive them. They're personal decisions that I have to see, occasionally. Like my white pants, but with slightly more pain involved.
Piercings
As with tattoos, I have never, for one moment, considered getting a piercing. It's not about the pain (I am clumsy enough and just masochistic enough to have inflicted considerable pain on myself through my decades on the Earth)... it's just aesthetic.
I am not naïve enough to fail to see two primary distinctions between tattoos and piercings (beyond the difference in them by definition).
The first is that piercings are actually potentially functional. While I won't get into details (and, indeed, many of you probably have more first-hand experience with the practical applications of piercings than I do), I will acknowledge that a stud here or a pin there can change things. *wink wink* I'm not going to go so far as I am with tattoos, then, in terms of how I feel about women with certain piercings.
Secondly is the gender difference. I alluded to an earlier opinion I had of tattoos on women looking dirty (which I never really thought about guys), but my perception of tattoos on people is sexually agnostic now... with piercings, though? I must admit that I don't think twice about women that have their ears pierced, and even a nose piercing on a chick isn't that big of a deal. A guy with piercings doesn't bother me, but I can't help but internalize it and consider if I would do that, and since the answer is invariably "no", I usually find it odd, even if intellectually I know I should not.
I remember that I was seeing a woman who had been pierced in a non-obvious fashion. We were walking as a part of a group with a woman that I knew much less, um, intimately, and this friend revealed that she had been pierced in the same locations. I turned, thinking that it was a point of commonality that the girl I was seeing could share with my friend, and loudly exclaimed that they both had pierced nipples.
Ooops.
It wasn't the vulgarity of the topic that set the chick I was seeing off. It was the pronouncement in a semi-public place of something that she had previously told me she considered to be private. Of course, I had assumed that with a kindred spirit (a "sister-in-piercing", if you will), surely an exception could be made. I assumed wrong. Much arguing ensued that night. Good times.
Where was I? Oh, yeah: I don't see myself getting pierced. Anywhere. Ever.
Asymetrical Facial Hair
It's been a fortnight since I have shaved. My facial hair doesn't grow that quickly, and it's fun to not have to worry about it too much. Until the last couple of years, there was no thread of anything resembling a mustache (let alone a beard) popping up on my face, so I didn't have much of a burden, but I also didn't have options.
I've sported a mustache a couple of times in the last year (part of the "f" in "funemployment") and let me tell you: it kinda sucked. Going out in public and having people comment on my mustache was just weird. I had several girls specifically tell me they did NOT like it, and I had several guys give me high fives and compliments that I am pretty sure were mocking me.
But, of course, they weren't mocking me. They were mocking my mustache. My mustache was a silly costume a put on (like my Keyshawn Johnson NY Jets jersey a couple of months ago)... I just left it on for a couple of months. One might argue that people were mocking me for wearing such a ridiculous costume, but I knew it was a ridiculous costume, and if they couldn't see that it was all part of a joke then their mockery held no currency with me.
With all of that said? Shaving off the mustache felt great. Not the actual physical act of it, but having it gone was like having a burden lifted off of me.
As I was lying by myself in bed tonight, my left cheek itched. I ignored it, and then my left part of my chin itched. I presume it was the whiskers poking up against my 1200 tc sheets, irritating my skin. Or maybe it was God telling me to stop messing around and shave.
Whatever it was, it reminded me of a
Larry Niven story where he discussed, in passing, trends in fashion in his future fictional world. One thing that stuck with me was the concept of asymmetrical facial hair.
Symmetry is an important part of how we perceive beauty. An individual with symmetrical features are, according to our innate detectors, less impacted by disease and genetic defects. Someone with a crooked smile is often seen as less trustworthy.
Makeup is applied, I would imagine, to perpetuate this symmetry, or perhaps even enhance it.
Facial hair, then, logically would be an extension of this: a mustache that sags on one side but not on the other will strike the audience member as much more strange than a mustache that is ridiculous in its own magnificent symmetry.
As a young adult when I read Niven's idea for asymmetrical facial hair, it stuck with me because I thought it would be funny. As I learned about the impact of symmetry on perceived beauty, I mentally revisited the idea and saw it as an interesting challenge to societal and evolutionary expectations--that Niven had essentially said, "In the future, guys won't be piercing their bodies or permanently painting their limbs, but will be flipping to bird to convention by wearing half a mustache."
Now that I am, at long last, capable of bringing this Niven idea to fruition, I find that I can't do it. And I'm not quite sure why.
Maybe I know that, even though I am one of three straight white guys in Seattle that will wear white jeans in public, I still am wearing white jeans that were made for men. I know that it's kind of out there. But not out there. If you know what I mean. I can wear a Halloween costume that scares any female who gets within 10 feet of me to the point where she won't talk to me, but it's Halloween, after all. I can wear a Keyshawn Johnson jersey from 1998 because, in spite of the comments by some helpful hecklers I encountered, I know that Johnson retired from the NFL in 2007.
But having a mustache that only covers the left side of my lip? And walking around like that in public?
That is something I cannot do.
