Unequal attitudes to body hair

SO you might be lying in the bath – the last refuge of the single parent – contemplating such imponderables as the existence of atheism, or whether you will ever be a size 12 again, or even a size 14.

The terrific new Terry Eagleton book, Culture and the Death of God, is lying face down on the bath mat, (“It is when religion starts to interfere with your everyday life that it is time to give it up. In this, it has a certain affinity with alcohol”), because you can only read such treasure in bite-sized chunks.

And then there is a knock on the door, and a question from the teenage daughter which every mother dreads. Not ‘do you want to be a grandmother by Christmas?’ or ‘would you mind if I dropped out of school and become a fingernail augmentation technician?’

No, worse than all that. She raises an arm – a perfect teenage arm full of perfect teenage collagen that is still decades away from the dreaded wing of bingo – and says, in a whisper that sounds both fearful and appalled: “How do I get rid of this?”

For in the sacred teenage armpit of perfection, there is some fluff. Inoffensive fluffy fluff. Fluff that only works to highlight the perfect teenage form. And yet her face is pained. She is going swimming and feels self conscious about the uninvited underarm fluffiness. So you might launch into a rousing, cheery come-along-now speech about how furry armpits are the new black, how fluff is toute la rage, how all the cool kids are furry, and she should wear her lady-fluff with pride, when she cuts you off. Just a tiny bit impatiently.

“You don’t,” she says. Just a tiny bit accusingly.

If you are lying in the bath with your arms folded behind your head, freshly shaved pits facing skyward, wet razor on the side (economy pack for men, nothing pastel, streamlined and overpriced) it is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that this is not the case. Forget smoking, bringing home weirdos, or experimenting with mind-bending substances —the real do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy lies in telling your teenage daughter that body hair is beautiful / natural / feminist /fashionable / all of the above when you are egg-smooth yourself. Or Desperate Dan stubbly.

No amount of wearing your No More Page Three t-shirt is going to rebalance THAT, now is it? And let’s not even think about going further south. That’s another column for another day. The irony is that when the same fluff appears on teenage daughter’s teenage boyfriend’s face, there is much quiet manly rejoicing, and exhortations for the fluff to grow faster, harder, tougher. Even as I reach for the razor to do my gorilla shins, this all smells of imbalance.