Gimme some ears with hair!

December 14, 2022

Geezer warning: keep these handy! (Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com)

Like any self-respecting writer, I obsess about being read, wondering if anyone out there cares or even notices what I say. So naturally I was delighted when the New York Times, no less, picked up a story I broke right here on this blog a few years back, “Why Do Men Sprout Hairs in Weird Places With Age?”

The odd places are the ears and nose. If you’re a woman, or a guy who’s not as “aged” as me, you might think this is trivial, and you’d be wrong. For one thing, ear hair has a fearsome-sounding medical name, which is auricular hypertrichosis. Left unchecked, it can lead to complications like deafness, though it’s hard to picture even the most clueless dude letting it go that far.

It’s still quite a shock when one day you look fine and the next there’s a clump of little tentacles sticking out of your helix and antitragus (the upper and lower portions of the ear). Like daffodils in spring, these babies shoot up fast. If I don’t clip and nip ’em in the bud, they get so long I can use them for dental floss. Okay, maybe not, although an Indian gent made Guinness when his shrub hit 13 centimeters (about five inches).

Nose hair is the lesser problem for me. The trouble is that it comes out whiter than a snow-covered mountain on a sunny day and instantly catches everyone’s eye except mine. However, I’m not about to embark on some painful, expensive treatment like lasers or electrolysis.

According to the Times, there’s a theory that long ago, baldness or ear hair “may have been seen as a sign of high testosterone and virility, making men with those characteristics appear to be viable mates.” YES! But, “Whatever the possible benefit might have been, long nose hair doesn’t seem to be serving the same purpose these days.”

Shrinkage: the other kind

I’m not the man I used to be. No matter how hard I try to live a proper life in all ways physical, intellectual, and emotional, I am a lesser person.

How lesser am I? About an inch. Relax: this has nothing to do with the “Seinfeld” that so eloquently portrayed the shrinkatory effect of cold water on the male, uh, exclamation point. The missing inch came out of my height.

This became clear when I was going through old papers and found a medical report from my college years, which listed my height as six feet plus half an inch (6’ 0.5”). At my last visit to the doctor a few months back, I checked in at 5’ 11”. Even if that means 5’ 11” and a quarter, a half, or two-thirds, I’m going through a slow but undeniable vertical fail. This isn’t fake news! I can’t argue with cold, hard science and real-time medical technology (like a measuring stick).

Why do we self-condense? Over time, the discs between the vertebrae dehydrate and compress, or maybe collapse from osteoporosis. The spine can get curved, or muscle loss in the torso can give you a stoop. Even the gradual flattening of your arches can leave you shorter.

The loss can start as early as age 30, which is about when my hair started vanishing. I’m used to that, but this plunges me into the tar pit of male insecurity. All my life, I’ve considered myself a Tall Guy. Can I honestly think of myself that way if I no longer top the six-foot baseline? Will I get busted by the vanity police?

My wife often asks me to “come here and be a tall person for a minute” when she needs something off a high shelf. Can I still fulfill her desires? (Not THOSE desires. I already told ya this ain’t about the meat and the motion.)

The worst kind of shrinkage is the kind that’s going on in my personal hard drive, also known as my brain. After 60+ years, it’s critically overstuffed with useless facts, and seems to be sending some of them down to the minors, for recall only when needed.

Just now, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of a Cajun band I saw at a joint called Tornado Alley in suburban Washington DC about 22 years ago. I remembered other Cajun musicians: the Balfa Brothers, D. L. Menard, Bruce Daigrepont, Terrence Simien and the Mallet Playboys, etc., before finally hitting the holy grail of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.  This is what’s known as a “senior moment.”

I try to limit my cranial clutter by weeding out nonessential info, like the name of the person I’ve just met, but it’s a losing battle. Now if you’ll excuse me, whoever you are, I’ve got to go put on some high heels.

Bun amuck

From Groupon

Women, is your man hard to shop for? And maybe a little short in the style department? Did you swipe right on a sizzling metrosexual dude who turned out to look like Dilbert instead? Want the perfect gift for your guy in this holiday* season?

Well, here it is: The clip-on man bun. Take a second to absorb those four words: Clip. On. Man. Bun. Now ponder the implications of living in a time where that phrase actually makes sense.

I gave up trying to understand fashion, especially men’s fashion, a long time ago, but this takes the absurdity to a new level. First of all, since when did buns even look stylish on women, except maybe ballerinas? Second, what’s the point in looking like a wannabe samurai? You might as well wear a Darth Vader mask and carry a plastic light-saber.

I guess if you’re determined to join the bun brigade, the clip-on makes more sense than natural hair, especially since this trend is liable to flame out any minute. Prediction: the next hot hairstyle for manly men will be the crested duck, or better yet, the crested coot.

*Don’t even think about giving me any of the grief that people are giving Starbucks about their red cups. Violators will have their devices hijacked and locked into an endless loop of, “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas.”

The backstory

Men, have you ever harbored a secret desire to look like Jennifer Lopez from the waist down? Do you want women to call you “studmuffins,” as Gilda Radner famously did to Dan Ackroyd on SNL? Has your life been ravaged, your nights tormented, by the heartbreak of flat butt syndrome, a.k.a. “gluteal amnesia”? Well, now there’s hope!

According to this article, women aren’t the only ones taking advantage of  “cosmetic buttock procedures.”  That’s right, male humanoids are now having fat Hoovered out of their bellies, love handles, and probably their heads, and getting it injected into le derriere. There’s been a “bump” in the number of guys submitting to this, from 2.2 percent of all such surgeries back in ’97 to 6.2 percent last year. There’s a similar tush – I mean push – in sales of “buttocks-enhancing underwear” for men.

The article, which is only slightly tongue in cheek (now cut that out!), describes this process as a solution for a guy who’s always had “a nonexistent butt. Zero.” He further says, “I’m not a girl so I’m not worried about having a table back there you could sit a coffee cup on. I just wanted to be able to put on a pair of pants and for them to stay up.” Another guy who’s had this done helpfully says, “I feel more confident and synergistic.” Okay. But did y’all maybe think about trying something just a tad less extreme? Like getting some custom-tailored pants?

Face it: Unless you’re an honest-to-God, working professional model, you’ve got no reason whatsoever to even THINK about using “cosmetic” and “buttocks” in the same sentence. And just remember, boys: you’ll be sitting on the results of this operation for the rest of your life. Anybody who’s eager to go under the knife (especially in Florida) should prep by reading Carl Hiaasen’s hilarious “Skin Tight,” in which, among other things, a woman who had breast implants ends up suing the doctor over damage to her husband’s eye. (Speaking of Florida funnymen: as Dave Barry might say, wouldn’t “Gluteal Amnesia” be a great name for a rock band?)

Women, if your man ever reverses roles on you and asks the time-honored question, “Do these jeans make my butt look big?” you’d better say yes.