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managed to lay her hands on some anaesthetic cream. Not only that but
they lasered her knee with such enthusiasm that it left a permanent scar, which then had to be
microdermabrasioned away.
    Lasering is also very expensive. And
time-consuming: theypretend you only need one session (liars, liars,
they’re all liars!), but it’s like therapy, you’ve to make a commitment for
months and months and months and months.
    Now, what if I was to admit that I was worried
about more than the hair on my legs? What if I were to … let’s see … admit I
was worried about, ooh … the hair on the small of my back? For example. Just
theoretically. Would other women be grateful? Would they say, ‘Thank you for articulating
our secret shame, Hairy-Backed Girl’?
    But even if they did, would they mean it? I
suspect it would be like Tom Cruise in
Jerry Maguire
when he wrote his manifesto
slagging off his job. Yes, everyone applauded him and said, ‘Nice one, mate! Thanks for
saying the unsayable.’ But then what happens? Yes! Next day he gets the sack.
    The thing is that girls aren’t meant to be
hairy – apart, of course, from the hairs on our heads and eyes, which are meant to be long
and lustrous and luscious. We are meant to be
very
hairy in these departments, but
otherwise entirely bald (a concession can be made for eyebrows, so long as they are well behaved
and know their place).
    Why? Why is hair good in one place and very, very
bad in another? (Because upkeep on both keeps women exhausted and demoralized and without energy
to get promoted? Do men expend time and money and anxiety combatting bad hair days? Just a
thought …)
    Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t
have to worry about any of this? If we all decided that we were going to stride forth together,
hairy and proud? Look at all the time we’d save. And money. And energy. And worry.
Wouldn’t it be great?
    First published in
Marie Claire
, August
2006.

Lasering
    I had my hairy legs lasered and it was a
resounding success! Previous to this I have had the hairiest legs in Christendom. Loads of times
I’ve met people and they’ve said, ‘Oh no, I bet my legs are hairier than
yours, mine are REALLY hairy,’ then I unveil my furry limbs and they usually swallow hard
and step back and say, ‘Riiiight, I see what you mean …’
    I’ve had them waxed for decades, but the
upkeep has always been a full-time job – about twenty minutes after I’ve had them
waxed, they start to grow back.
    So I went to have them
lasered, and in all fairness they did warn me that one go wouldn’t cure me, but even after
one go there has been a DRAMATIC lessening, a great deforestation. I can’t tell you just
how astonished I was, because NOTHING works for me, not fake tan, not Restylane, not even
automatic doors. (I often have to jump around on the pad in front of the door for some time
before it finally notices me.)
    But this worked. Christ, though, the PAIN. I
admit I’m a whinger, but I’ve never found leg waxing to be painful – in fact I
find it quite relaxing, and I really unsettle beauticians, who say I’m an oddball, which I
am, but not in the way they mean. So I was feeling quite cocky before my laser patch test
– and within moments I was beaten. It was incredibly unpleasant, like being burnt over and
over again, and I was trembly and nauseous for ages after it ended.
    So I went on the interwebs, oh yes I did, and
found a dodgy site willing to sell me Emla (local-anaesthetic cream) without a prescription. I
put in my details and gave them my credit card number and wondered if I’d just been
royally swizzed.
    Then maybe ten days later, this massive box, a
veritable CRATE, amigos, arrived, laden with jumbo-sized tubes of Emla, and joy abounded.
    Except for Himself. Joy didn’t abound for
him, because he is naturally cautious. ‘Tubes, I grant you,’ he said. ‘Big
ones, yes, I admit they’re big ones, and lots of them, and they DO say Emla on the
outside, but it