spandex & lucite shoes: part 37, hairs and bits

I've been terribly remiss/reluctant/whatever about writing the ends of my strip tenure at The FlashDancer Finishing School for Young Ladies. What follows is just a snipped bit of my life as an ecdysiast, just some detritus that on any other day would collect in a little wet bristly pad on the floor of a shower. Read on, and if you want, read the whole body of work here.

Late in the spring of 1996, The New Yorker published an article on the design, creation and release of Gillette’s Mach 4 razor. No doubt some people read the article and thought about investing in Gillette. Others probably read it and felt some kind of compassion for the legions of aeronautic engineers who, unfunded by NASA, were compelled to make a living by building a better razor.

But I, I was enraptured, seduced by the technological genius that was the Mach 4 before the Mach 4 had even hit the market. So excited was I to purchase said razor that I marked its release date on my calendar. And when the day came, it was with a giddy joy I bought the razor; it was with elation that I used it.

I loved my Mach 4, loved it with a flamey passion, loved it long and loved it well, loved it until those unrequited aeronautic engineers at Gillette graced my depilatory routine with a yet better product, the Venus, a razor I use unto this day.

We strippers are often asked if we wax or shave. Now that I’m no longer a stripper, I wax those naughty bits when I can and shave the rest. But when I was stripping, there was no possibility of waiting for my hair to grow long enough to be ripped out by its little roots. I shaved every day I worked, like it or not.

I have the downy blonde body hair of the archetypal surfer chick. Not a particularly hirsute gal, yet I have the need to shave. I’ve shaved my armpits since my 7th grade Home Ec teacher informed our class that it helped to contain B.O., and my calves since shortly thereafter just to feel balanced. My bikini area has grown emboldened as I’ve grown older; it crossed the Rubicon of the modest swimsuit line at some point in my late twenties, so the topiary of my bush needs landscaping. I also get a rather unpleasant thatchiness that spreads down the backs of my thighs. One friend, well before I ever stripped, said it looked like I was wearing “hair shorts.”

The very first time I ever shaved my pubic area I did so because this guy I’d made out with had given me crabs. Then I had sex with my boyfriend, he in turn got crabs, and then he informed me that I’d given them to him. Horrified, I put all of my bedding in the wash and got into the shower with several shavers and a big can of shaving cream.

I just took it all off. And when it grew back, it itched worse than the crabs. And then I let it all grow back.

When you strip, though, you need to be as hairless as a prepubescent Indonesian boy.

Female body hair, as the 1917 riots that followed the public exhibition of Modigliani’s wispily tufted nudes attested, is highly erotically charged. It’s not merely where and how much hair there is; it’s that it’s there at all. In a lot of ways, a denuded body is a less naked body. When a body has no hair to demark you what you’re looking at, you’re less aware that what you’re looking at is a naked body.

It might be as simple as the fact that we associate a hairless body with a sexless body. It might also be what the crowds rioting at Modigliani’s feral females railed against: that a body with hair looks more bestial.

Strippers, in general, are not bestial. We are creatures of fantasy, and as fantasy we need to maintain a fantastical presence. Pubic hair is a reality. Razor stubble is even more pointedly so. When customers surreptitiously rub our calves while we’re dancing for them, they like to feel the glidey smooth lushness of hair-free flesh. They don’t want to the sandpaper of stubble to snag their fantasy. They want it to let it flow like silk, a feeling we strippers want too, for if their fantasy flows, so does their money.

When I became a stripper, I accordingly elevated shaving from a necessary and occasional evil to something of an art. I shaved my calves every night before I worked. I shaved my armpits, pubic area and the backs of my thighs every other day—in part because I got massive rash if I shaved too often and in part because only my calves grew back so quickly that they needed daily maintenance.

I’ve experimented with a lot of shaving creams and many shaving methods. The best shaving unguent, I think, is really cheap moisturizer. Nothing that foams, no gel, no menthol to make your tender bits go all tingly (unless you like that sort of thing). Just great heaping handfully gobs of something cheap and forgettable like Queen Helene or St. Ives.

In general, most strippers do not remove all of their pubes. In general, most strippers do what I did: shave a perfect small triangle in front, narrow the center to two thin labia-hugging strips, shave completely the meeting of the butt and the bits, and trim the remaining hair to a close quarter inch. Many of us get electric trimmers for the remaining strips. I didn’t. I just tweaked the hair and snipped the ends with scissors.

Some strippers, however, had more aggressive hair management methods. One German girl shaved her armpits, legs, pubic triangle and her arms. My friend Rica, who is Thai, and rather hairless, so this never made any sense to me, but then she also worked in Manolo Blahniks, so whatever, got laser hair removal. She’ll ease into decrepitude never looking as if she ever reached puberty.

And yet others had more idiosyncratic hirsute aesthetics. There was this girl who went by the name Selena. She was from Venezuela, and with her big floppy curly mop of hair that quivered when she walked or danced, she looked like the love child of Charo and a muppet. Selena seemed oddly boneless. Her body had a ripe-to-bursting fecundity without actually being fat. Her belly’s softness made it seem as if were you to poke it, your finger would sink knuckle deep without resistance, like you had stuck your finger in a roll of raw pop-n-fresh dough.

One night rather late in my strip career, I was perched in the stool in the dressing room, resting my feet, trying not to look at the lines in my face and wonder what the hell I was doing there. Selena exited the bathroom stalls, dressed only in her g-string and heels and passed by my chair. As she did, I could see quite a few long curly hairs glistening blonde against her toasted marshmallow loins.

Completely inappropriately, I reached down and pulled at the hairs, uncoiling them to their fullest length.

Don’t you want to tuck those in? I asked, aghast that anyone would show pubic hair.

“No,” Selena purred, “I like to show them. It gives the mens a tease,” and dress on, she flounced out the door.

Thereby explaining, perhaps, why I was sitting in the dressing room bemoaning the slenderness of my gartered cashwad, while Selena was surfing the crest of the crowd, shaking her boneless body, being paid lavishly for baring the promise of her lush flesh.

It always bugged me when other girls figured out the game better than I did. It still does.

Comments

[redcat]

"It always bugged me when other girls figured out the game better than I did. It still does."

O baby! Truer words have never been spoken! I love it!

[Dante Fremen]

Chelsea Girl,

Since I followed a link to your blog some weeks ago, I have enjoyed your writings both erotic and mundane. You are such a refreshing reality check, and an inspiration to be true to oneself.

Thanks!

[Steve]

So, have you tried the new FUSION technology, with 5 blades (for comfort) and 1 more on the flip side (for slicing the crap out of your index finger)?

[chelsea girl]

Dante, thank you. I appreciate your kind words. Like Oscar Wilde, my bouttoniere is always a green carnation, and I can take any criticism, as long as it is unqualified praise.

And Steve, no, but with that ringing endorsement, I shall be sure to.

kissykiss,
chelsea girl

[The Fury]

How flashdancers could stay so appropriately clean and soft to the touch has always amazed me. Now you have relieved my wonder. The next thing I wondered is if the popularity of Bath & Body Works and The Body shop places sell strippers products by the gallon as the sweet scents never seem to end. Thank God LOL

[badinfluencegirl]

i really have not much to say except *giggle*

and you know? i hate it when other people are better at things than i am too...

and who knew that a few hairs were such a big tease... *ponders*

[Zach]

Hey Chelsea,

Hate to nitpick, but it's the Gilette Mach 3, a three-bladed razor. Not the Mach 4. The Schick Quattro came out later (four-bladed), only to be topped in the depilatory arms race by the Gilette Fusion (five blades).

[Sabine]

An endorsement for a commitment to either soft downy fur or a clean smooth shave/ strip off wax. These study days leave me with -nothing- to be proud of in the maintenance stakes, but a recent soujourn with a chap entirely covered in stiff stubble over arms, neck, legs, back, crotch left me chaffed and wondering- the texture, the texture....

[Lannie]

"a denuded body is a less naked body"
i love this. this is a beautiful post. i love love love it.

Cheers,
Lannie
http://www.nuumedspa.com