Welcome to The Toast’s inaugural advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons. (We are open to better names for it.) Sometimes Mallory will take one, or Nicole will take one, or we’ll both give it a shot. Like sleep, we will knit up the raveled sleave of care.
All right, look, I read all the advice columns. I’ve read similar stories over and over. But now it’s happening to me, which makes it slightly more important. I’m a 24 (almost 25) year-old virgin. I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal; I’m certain it’ll happen eventually. And there are plenty of other sexy things to do with partners in the meantime. The one really important relationship I’ve had ended with me absolutely heartbroken (and still un-sexed). Since that ended about 2 years ago, I’ve been online dating, but no one has really been worth my time and energy.
I was just about done with OKCupid, when I met an awesome guy. We’ve been dating for just over a month, and we just had our first (amazing and super fun) hookup. Afterwards, I mentioned to him that we’ll need to wait a bit before we have sex, because I haven’t done it before. I feel dishonest if I don’t reveal this fact about my life. He responded sort of weirdly, and started rambling on about how he might not be living here in a while. Frankly, he sounded conflicted about a lot of things in life. What’s the best way to proceed with this? It would be SUCH a shame if he thought I was a marriage-hungry virgin-who-gets-attached, and if he ended things because of that. Yeah, I know: if he can’t handle this fact about me, he’s an asshole and not worth my time. But I do want something meaningful with him, and I just hope this isn’t the thing that ends things between us.
Mallory: Let us gently and carefully set aside definitions of virginity for the nonce, lest we become drawn off-course. I will put it in the corner, here, and we will quarrel about it gleefully another day.
It is of course up to you to weigh the existent pleasure of the super-fun hookups that have already come to pass against the hypothetical pleasure of pursuing a sexual relationship with someone who is sort of weird and rambly and conflicted about a lot of things, including the ravening and savage power of a virgin heart. Sometimes, of course, people say odd things when they are taken by surprise. Sometimes, of course, people say what they want very clearly when they are taken by surprise. It all depends on whether your conversation went like this:
“I am a virgin.”
“Ah. Oh. I see. How nice. I have, I have plans, and also a job, and someday may move, although then again someday I may not, and I do not understand why a person needs to own a hand towel when you can dry your hands on a regular-sized towel, and also some other things about me.” (This followed by eventual calm, and then later some sex.)
Or more like this:
“I am a virgin.”
“The sea calls to me, and I must go.” (Exit hurriedly, pursued by a bear.)
If the sea calls to him, there is little you can do about it. Should he continue to hem and haw and avoid making plans to meet up again in the future, you must take his terrified little hint and return to the sea yourself, on the hunt for larger and more confident prey.
I am of the opinion that it is better to have no sex at all than sex with a mediocre or lukewarm or inconsistent partner, but I am also of the opinion that cutting ties and taking to the sea is always the best option, so there is that. You may feel differently, in which case it may be worth teasing out whether or not he fears you have been saving yourself for his wizard’s scepter and will attempt to merge with him during intercourse. Perhaps a friendly chat will sort all this out and you can have an indefinite amount of time to enjoy casual relations together.
Or you can take to the sea.
How do I maintain my composure and act like a grown-up in the midst of a sea of (okay, three, but they swarm so) screaming toddlers? (How do daycare/preschool workers manage a roomful?) The cacophony of noise becomes unbearable sometimes, and I feel overwhelmed and I’m very sorry to say I often lose my patience with them, and then feel like an asshole because (a) I should be better at managing my emotions than two-and-a-half year olds, and (b) I can’t expect or teach them to be better at it until/unless I am.
Mallory: A story. I moved into a new apartment a couple of weeks ago, and I took my cat with me. Normally my cat is a cheerful indoor/outdoor mix, popping in and out of my house as needed, in an arrangement that suited us both. Something about this new place, however, has set him on edge, and today marked the fourth solid week where he has refused to set foot outside the front door, and it has tested the limits of my love for him. This cat is an idler and a prowler and a bloodsucking non-producer and he sheds all the time (“Buy a rolly thing!” chirps my useless friend Maria, as if I do not roll after him constantly, this cat who trails glory and wiry black hairs in his wake) and he jumps on my head just as I start to fall asleep.
Last night I picked him up and bunged him out the door, shutting it behind him in equal parts relief and guilt. I was overwhelmed by the needs of my small cat, a notoriously need-free animal. He pawed and mewed piteously against the door as if he were Laura in Dr. Zhivago, trapped in a blinding Russian snowstorm, rather than in a warm and spacious hallway. I hate my cat and will not mourn him when he dies. I will dance on his fur-choked grave and I will blot his name out from the written records of mankind.
I let him in after a minute and he is currently perched on the chair right by my bed, waiting to leap onto my pillow at a moment’s notice, but that isn’t the point. Have you read The Call of the Wild? Where the contented California dog ends up in the wilds of the Yukon and realizes he loves living in the woods and fending for himself and never jumping on anyone’s head or needing to be emotionally fulfilled?
It would be great if nobody needed us, is what I’m saying.
Nicole: Oh, shit. Man, you have THREE of those things, what do I know? You are already three times better at this than I, and people really frown on taking tranquilizers now. When people ask me for advice, I generally check first to see if my three stock answers apply:
– Have you talked to her about it?
– Have you considered embracing a really gorgeous, super-butch aesthetic instead of bothering with that?
– Don’t text him.
None of those answers apply here. When I was nine months pregnant, I became terrified that I would become different after I had a baby, because everyone says you do. In the middle of the night, I would clutch the man who put the baby in me and say: I hope I still love you after but maybe I’ll be different and you’ll be like Engywook asking what it was like to pass through the Magic Mirror Gates. Hold me.
And then, in the very late watches of the night: If we hate this, if we genuinely hate this, tell me we’ll find a way to send them to an austere boarding school and just mark it down as a WHOOPS. We swore it to each other.
Which, blessedly, did not come to pass. But the reality of it, the blur of activity and noise you describe, is, coupled with the inexplicable tedium, the real canker in the rose of parenthood. How can one be so busy and yet so bored? How can one be the best version of oneself all day long, and still have a oneself at the end of it? Your dearest friends and your partner are such because you can let them see the worse parts of you sometimes. Do you snap at your parents? My best friend and I were just commiserating over the fact we love our parents more than ANYTHING, but because they are our parents we snap at them sometimes, like teenagers, and then are so conscious of having wounded them and want to hurl ourselves into ponds like the bags of mewling kittens we are inside.
And being short with your kids, or dismissive, is even worse. The horrible motivational email forwards with the picture of an infant that says SHE KNOWS NOTHING OF HATE OR IGNORANCE OR INTOLERANCE EXCEPT WHAT YOU SHOW HER? I mean, take to your BED, that is so much responsibility.
What I would say is to prioritize your own happiness. To embrace the Good Enough Mother. Are you familiar with that concept? It states that if you look after your children adequately and demonstrate love and affection, you are already in the highest percentile of being a parent, and that, honestly, the amount of work you put in beyond that point will only raise their experience a tiny bit. It’s not always even worth the effort! Let them mill around you and be glad that you are there, but don’t worry that every second is being jotted down somewhere. They are under four, right? They won’t remember this. They are accumulating a beautiful subconscious awareness of having loving, slightly harried parents who meet their needs. That’s all! My mom stayed home with us when we were very little, then went back to work, and I don’t remember any of it except that now I love her uncontrollably and painfully and hamfistedly.
What I’m saying, really, is that sometimes we yell because we are too invested in the minutia. Oh, fuck it, you’ll be cold if you don’t put on the hat, but you’ll figure it out. If there are days when you feel like you phoned it in a bit, those are often the days when you didn’t snap, and just stood there like naked Alanis in that video while people milled around her. They’re below your knees and barely noticing. You’re naked Alanis and the Muppet Babies mom to them, except they grab you more. Try to embrace that.
Except, of course, when you have one kid and they’re driving you nuts, whatever, you can zone out, but if you have three and they are trying to injure each other, you can’t exactly be naked Alanis.
tl;dr: Get a border collie. SOLVED. No, you’re amazing, best of luck. All your children will say of you, when grown, is “my mother must have been a SAINT to raise triplets. Sometimes she snapped at us, but I can’t believe she didn’t just drive up to some noisy abortion protesters and say OKAY HERE YOU GO HAVE FUN I’LL BE BACK AT SEVEN.”
I guess maybe I just want everyone to stand up and say “I have chin hairs too!” I have five or six coarse black hairs on my chin. I swear, one day, no hair and then the next they’ve sprouted! Why? How do they get so long so fast? What should I do? I have this whack-a-mole situation going on where I pluck one and two more show up! Am I making it worse? Thanks!
Nicole: No, yeah, I have chin hairs too, but I’m pretty into sitting right now, so know that I am standing in spirit. And literally all my female friends I have asked about this also have chin hairs, and we have an elaborate phone-tree planned for if one of us is in a coma or loses the use of our arms, so we can just show up and get ‘er done for the fallen party. Running through my three answers, I could go with “Have you considered embracing a really gorgeous, super-butch aesthetic instead of bothering with that?” but we’ve already established you are not stoked and want to bother with that. Me neither. I’ve only got, like, six, and if anyone walks in the bathroom while I’m holding tweezers I look like I just got caught licking the butter. There are ABSOLUTELY women who have decided not to care: my aunt’s long-term (now ex-) partner was a happy, bearded lady, and just got on with life, and that worked really well for her. But we’ll proceed with the understanding that happy bearded-lady-ness is not for you.
(Right off the bat, you should read what Logan wrote about this in The Billfold, because I think it’s really good, as are the comments.)
Let me go through your questions one at a time.
Why? Because Eve did bite the apple, at the behest of the snake, and so now you are to bring forth children in pain and suffering, and, whether or not you sign on for that, you may have sharp things poking out of your face. It’s really bad. And it can becomes this huge thing about femininity and womanhood; I mean, it’s rough for cis women who have facial hair they want to get rid of, and it’s often an even rougher situation for trans* women, in terms of time and emotional energy and money and trying not to care but actually caring. So, what I’m saying is, this is reason 5000345 that being woman-identified in a gender-norm-focused society is a colossal pain.
How do they get so long so fast? NO ONE KNOWS. No, that’s not true. You have a lot of blood flow to the region, those things are feisty and resilient and HORMONES and bullshit. They’re so fast! And then you’ve got the day you can feel them but can’t see them, and then the day you can see them but not grab them, and then you’ve got the day you can grab them but accidentally just break them off instead of getting them all the way out, and it’s the worst. Wizards, patriarchy, climate change, something. Someone must be to blame. HALLIBURTON.
What should I do? Look, you’ve got the electrolysis and the lasering, and only you know your price point and capabilities on that one. And, again, it’s hormones, right, and it changes over time, and if you have a kid or choose to get older, if that’s something you want to do one day, you’ll get new ones and old ones will come back. If you’re talking, like, sub-forty hairs, I say just get a Tweezerman and a depressing mirror and pair it with doing calf raises or listening to P!nk. I’m sure she has chin hairs too.
Am I making it worse? You are not! It’s Science. You’re also not addicted to your lip balm. This is the really reassuring part of this. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. Robin Williams holds you and rocks you to sleep, and Ben Affleck is sad you’re gone but knows it was for the best, and, whatever, Matt Damon gives you a really beautiful, toothy smile and angles the mirror with the light so you can see what you’re doing.
Is your life imperfect? Have you troubles at work, or in your dark and moldering soul? Consider asking us for help at [email protected]. And take it easy on the romance questions, will you? One busted heart per customer.
Tags: advice, advice from two disparate persons, cats, children, neediness, sex, sleave is not misspelled it is from shakespeare, the sea, virginity
jeez LW2 sounds like a pathetic loser, who loses their temper at TODDLERS
:-/
that ought to throw ’em off the scent
No no no! LW2 is very sympathetic because she is raising 3 toddlers at the same time and it’s amazing that she can even get through the day at all because she is raising three tiny, adorable people who have been, and will be in for a bit longer, their tyrant stage.
hugs
Also, maybe a herding dog would be a good idea. But a small one. How’s a corgi?
CORGIS LOVE BABIES
Crate-train the entire toddler/dog pack together.
True! But they are also a huge pain in the ass sometimes, so it would be like having FOUR toddlers, except that one of them can be shoved into a wire cage without anyone calling child protective services.
I like the co-crate training idea.
You should definitely get a corgi to herd them BUT ALSO ONLY if you agree to turn your life into a web series so that we can all enjoy the visual of a corgi herding toddlers.
Again, this hypothetical corgi should be dressed in people clothes, for maximum entertainment value. You should also name him something like Guv’nor Pip.
<3
Our dog would happily try to herd them but she’d just keep knocking them over like usual until they tearfully told her to bugger off.
My mom is convinced that I am having twins. She says the psychic mom powers have told her this and the psychic mom powers that she holds have yet to be wrong, however seemingly random they were at the time. Even though they aren’t triplets, I have just suggested that we invest in a Corgi if she is correct. I’ve always wanted a Corgi and what better reason than multiple babies?
also “drive up to some noisy abortion protesters” awwwww yeaahhhh *googles abortion providers*
I laughed so hard at that line. “I didn’t abort! Here, you take care of them, I JUST NEED A NAP AND A GLASS OF WINE!”
“tl;dr: Get a border collie. SOLVED.”
I thought this was a pretty good approach.
I have 1 toddler and there are weeks where she alone grates on my last damn nerve. NO, I CAN’T HAND YOU THE GLASS OF JUICE THAT IS SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, GODDAMNIT.
My neighbor has twins and just yesterday we were talking about how it’s never any big thing that pushes us over the edge, it’s the constant accumulation of little things, until that last little thing causes the Red Haze to descend and you come back to yourself a few minutes later thinking, “Who is yelling? I’m yelling? Uh oh, why am I yelling?”
I wish I had a better answer than just commiseration! This parenting gig is wicked hard.
the Red Haze. omgggg I am hugging you through my screen, bc that is perfect.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this column but it really resonated with me (in addition to cracking me up). I think this particular line very, very often over the course of the day:
If someone else talked to you like that, they’d be put in prison.
IT’S FUNNY ‘CAUSE IT’S TRUE.
ahhhh. laugh-sobbing. thank you!
From my lofty perch as the mother of a child who is 7, I can say that it’s an actual honest to god miracle that my child and I both survived the toddler years with our limbs and sanity intact. And I only have 1!
Hold fast, mama, whoever you are. Not you, iceberg, but whoever that LW was.
Are you kidding me, every day I read this website and I thank our sweet witch-queen goddess below that it is you and not I who has to deal with about a million tiny knee-high creatures swarming and milling and bustling and drooling, because your love for them is so obvious even a robot dinosaur on the internet can see it.
I mean, I lose my temper at inanimate objects on the REG. Also last week I left a bottle of wine on a bench. I am not mom material! I am so glad SOMEONE around here is!
Seriously, last time I babysat a toddler I got so irritated I told her her bossiness was “unbecoming.” And then she looked at me like what the fuck? because she’s three. And that was just one ten hour day! Anyone who is responsible for three toddlers full time basically already qualifies as a miracle worker.
I am absolutely going to start telling my 2.5 year old that her sassiness is unbecoming. But only partly because then she’ll pick it up and say it to me and it will be adorable and infuriating at the same time, much like my daughter herself.
TODDLERS.
Whenever one of them spills or breaks something the other two go “Ohhhh, [BB name]” sorrowfully… I wonder where they picked that up from!
I can’t even imaging having one toddler. Honestly, the fact that you haven’t murdered them by now makes you…I mean LW2…a saint in my book.
Please! Everyone loses their temper at toddlers. Or they should. Toddlers are the worst combination of mobile and pre-reasonable. I remember vividly THROWING my screaming three-year-old brother onto his bed–it was the dumbest possible luck that I had the presence of mind to aim at something soft. And there was only one of him. Is LW2 still standing? Rather than rocking back and forth in a corner while that tiny army learns how to carve spears and make fire? Then zie is the HERO OF THE DAY.
Just hopping on this thread to send you some love. I was reading this in bed with a sore throat and much malaise, and thinking, “Man, how much shittier would this low-grade illness be with three toddlers running about? SO MUCH.”
You are the bravest and strongest and most powerful, and you can tell because you’re still upright and sane. For you, wine time is anytime, in testament to your heroism.
oh man this one time I had flu or something and was hunched over the toilet puking when the Diva walked in, peered into the toilet and said “Mama sick?”
good times
i think the reply to *LW2* was great, though – on days that feel like the Last Straw, they won’t remember or be scarred by a Mama who maybe put them in front of Phineas and Ferb for a while to have a cup and tea and mostly just stare at the kettle and count to 10. they are too self-absorbed at this point, they probably wouldn’t even notice.
If I had a dollar for every time I yelled at my daughter when she was a toddler and made her cry, I’d be very rich. She is also now 10 and not scarred at all by past (or present) yelling.
I’m going to pretend that when Nicole wrote “They are under four, right? They won’t remember this,” that was a typo that should have read “They are under *18*, right?” Because the 4.5-year-old in my house still works my last nerve most days and I either snap at him or, even worse, turn the full force of my Professorial Disdain upon him.
Preschoolers don’t respond well to cutting sarcasm, by the way. Try to avoid such an approach.
In all seriousness, I have tried to adopt (admittedly, with my *one* child) a policy called What If I Say Yes? and it’s kind of revolutionary for me. My knee-jerk reaction to so many requests is “No!” that taking a moment to think about what the problem would be if I say yes actually reduces my tension in an amazing way. You want to dump all your crayons on the table? Well, clean-up will be a pain, but that’s a pretty minor problem, so sure, knock yourself out, kid. You want to have a donut? Well, you ate a whole bunch of fruit and cheese and good stuff for lunch so, sure, I guess. You want to go wrestle on MomDad’s bed? Why the hell not, bubba, let’s go. Letting go of all the parenting things I thought I should be doing helped, a considerable amount. (He’s still not allowed to play with knives or drink my good gin.)
she has 3 TODDLERS. give her all the drinks. forget the bread!
BY THE HAIRS ON MY CHINNY CHIN CHIN. I have them too! I pluck when I am stroking my chin and they feel particularly obtrusive, but otherwise, whatever. (I also quit shaving my pits and legs this year out of sheer laziness, and I am already extending a big middle finger to the beauty industrial complex by being an unrepentant fatty, so this may not work for you!) But many of us have the chin hairs! You are not alone!
I think my dislike of my chin hairs may actually be completely independent of the Beauty Industrial Complex, weirdly enough. They CURL. It is WEIRD and I HATE IT.
Beauty Industrial Complex or now, I hate how they stab me when I brush my chin with my hand. DO NOT STAB ME, RUDE CHIN HAIRS.
Yeah, I don’t shave my pits and am pretty sloppy about my legs, but you had better believe I won’t go out of town for a long weekend without my tweezers. I think what bothers me is that it’s just the ONE hair. If I had a full, luscious beard… well that would probably still bother me, but in a different way.
I think you are me! Except I’ve never managed to pluck my chin hairs. I just tweeze them when I notice them, which is oddly satisfying.
I haven’t shaved my legs or pits regularly for years, mostly out of laziness. I usually wear pants and rarely wear sleeveless shirts, anyway. I usually cave when I do wear clothing that reveals those areas, but I recently went camping for a week and let all the hair fly free in shorts and bathing suit, and it was great. Fortunately my last few LTRs were with dudes who don’t care if I’m hairy.
Fortunately for them.
Yeah, if a dude demanded that I shave all the time, the relationship wouldn’t last very long.
pedant: sleeve. Not sleave /pedant
DOUBLE PEDANT: PERIOD-APPROPRIATE ORIGINAL SPELLING
CHECK THE TAGS, YOU MONSTER
I always forget to check the tags! Crap. Retracted!
Honestly, we were both probably hoping someone would point it out so we could double-correct them. For we are truly the monsters.
I miss those awesome Elizabethan times when we could spell things however we damn well felt like it. Yours forsoothly, Bitersweat
I like the idea of blaming Halliburton for my chin hairs.
I have no shame about being caught with my tweezers. This is the work I do in the name of patriarchy, I’m not going to hide it!
I don’t have any chin hairs (…yet) but I do have a mole hair! Every now and then my man asks if I want him to yank it out, but I keep it around because I feel it gives me some witch street cred.
Most folk I know have some sort of unwanted or at least side-eyed chin or mole or ear hairs. Yooooouuu are nooooot alooooone.
I have a mole hair too! It grows so long and curly and it hurts like a motherfucker to pluck. Why does it keep coming back? WHY!?
I also have a mole hair! I only pluck it when it reaaaalllyy long. No chin hairs, though I do have a nose hair that grows like…half an inch out of my nostril.
In that case it’s really satisfying to yank it out and make yourself sneeze while your eyes water. But only sometimes.
Ahhh! I have chin hair and mole hairs! Plural! It is a constant battle. And the worst part of the mole hair – they are dark at the root, but blonde at the tip, making them hard to find. Grr!
I have a mole hair like this on my jawline. You can’t see the hair unless the light is just right. So sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, I should check on that. When was the last time I tweezed my mole?!” and I will inspect in the mirror and it will be A MILE LONG. Well, not a mile, but impressive nonetheless. And then I am kind of grossed out but kind of proud of my mole.
Let us band together one and all, and call ourselves the Mole Clan.
yep! i have one on my back so it doesn’t bother me none, but once in a while the fella will come up behind me and yank it out. it’s such a sorrysorry/thanks feeling.
I have several mole hairs, dark and thick and lush, sprouting boldly from a single big mole on my forearm where the whole world pretends to ignore them.
One day, The Fella reached over and absently, lovingly stroked my mole-hairs. Half of me shriveled up in horror and shame; the other half flamed in righteous lust, dazzled that he could love this homely piece of me as fully and perfectly as he loves the rest of me.
Then the righteous half slayed the shamed half and ate its heart. And I jumped on The Fella and kissed him hard, THE END.
This is a great story and I would like to tell it to my family at Christmas.
BLESS US EVERY ONE.
I don’t understand why some moles are full of hair and some are quietly bald!
This is baffling to me as well. I have several that grow ostentatious hairs, but one very large one that, even if I didn’t shave my legs, does not. O.O
Yes! By which I mean to say that I am genuinly confused about the concept of an extra towel for hands.
In my case, it’s because I don’t want anybody drying their possibly-not-properly-washed hands on the towel I will rub on my clean body.
Tell me more about this really gorgeous, super-butch aesthetic, Nicole.
Mallory has my back on this, but super-butch women are the most gorgeous of the women, and should rule over us all and look amazing and have strong arms and take no shit.
BRITTNEY GRINER
MAKE ME A BETTER BUTCH, MALLORY
I mean, actually, that should probably go to Nicole? Because I’ve got the clothes and a bit of the swagger (I mean, as long as we’re talking about books and geophysics) but not the arms, and yes, need the arms.
….come talk to me when you’ve got the arms, girl.
Is always the answer.
OMG my neighbor behind me is a tiny fifty-something lady with ridiculously toned and muscled arms (and everything, probably), and she’s got like a dozen bicycles. I love her.
I am so much more comfortable dealing with my half-dozen chin hairs than with my girl-stache. Because that is just a horrible spiral of “it’s mostly blonde, nobody notices but maybe I’m deluding myself and sometimes the light catches it just so but wax would do horrible things to my delicate face skin and tweezing hurts like hell if I stare at myself in the mirror much longer I might turn to stone where did these snakes on my head come from.”
Yup, I have to choose between a mustache and a break out, and neither is attractive.
About two months ago, after approximately 18 years of waxing/bleaching/Nairing the hell out of my mustache and then spending the next two weeks smearing soothing creams on my inflamed delicate face skin until it was time to do it again, I started shaving it, which has been a total game changer. It takes 30 seconds and doesn’t irritate my skin at all, and the hair grows slowly enough that it still only has to happen every two weeks or so. And as a bonus, shaving my upper lip gives me enough of a “fuck you, gender norms” attitude that I no longer feel uncomfortable about being a feminist who is also really concerned about her mustache.
I fight a neverending battle against the twin monsters of sensitive skin and shaggy Sasquatch hair, and I definitely agree with the razor. I grabbed a little personal shaver at Target last trip that is perfect for this task (among others). I also used to use my eyebrow scissors, which worked very well.
Yessssssss. In the past three years, I’ve developed the thickest, blondest peach fuzz along my sideburny regions and creeping onto my cheekbones and jawline. Shaving takes care of all that in two seconds and I can pretend that I’m also exfoliating and preventing future lines. And I can do it in the shower, because if I miss a spot, so what, it’s blonde and only really bothering me. All the winning!
I’ve timed all my body-hair maintenance to my period, so I know that once I start feeling PMS-y, it’s time to shave my face, groom my nethers, and trim my bangs. So convenient.
I should have also asked about the mustache situation! (Hi! I have Chin Hairs, I asked The Toast about it) And I totally do have a faint mustache going on, and it is brown? But light and hard to see? I shave it very infrequently. I like this timing to the cycle idea, I never trim my bangs often enough!
As a manperson, I get weird longer/coarser/darker hairs occasionally coming out of my face along with the normal hairs that also come out of my face. This is not the same, obviously, and I am not trying to compare them. I am merely saying that the growth rate of certain hairs as compared to others is bewildering and mysterious.
This is like my guy friend who has normal dude eyebrows….except for one hair that grows in a totally different direction, in a totally different texture and color than the rest.
I taught him how to pluck it, and got him a pair of tweezermans and now he’s good. But yes, hair growth is indeed bewildering and mysterious.
Sometimes I wake up and overnight a strange, white, mutant hair has sprung up in between my eyebrows.
Man, I have a toddler, chin hair, and was an old-lady virgin. I have opinions about all of these!
LW1: I, personally, think that when you tell someone you’re a virgin, if the answer isn’t some version of “ok, that’s cool,” they’re not worth the trouble. But if you like this dude, I suggest a Come To Jesus talk where you’re like, “Hey, I like you and want to see where this goes, including possibly sex or something long-term, but one of those things is not a requirement for the other, so don’t worry your conflicted head over that.”
I love calling revelations and realizations a “Come to Jesus moment.”
I am another former old-lady virgin, and I agree with Lyette, but also I didn’t follow her advice at all, and instead got it over with in a drunken wedding hookup where he had no idea. I am maybe the worst?
No, that is a totally valid and time-honored strategy! I’m pretty sure it’s the real purpose of weddings, actually.
I need to keep this in mind when planning table assignments, clearly.
agreed. i was a 28-y-o virgin, and i think my boyfriend’s response was pretty perfect – “ok, cool. that’s not even my favourite thing to do, actually”.
i suppse maybe you need to make sure that dude knows your reasons why – i can understand a different reaction to “just hasn’t happened yet” than to “my religion says to wait for marriage”, is all. for example.
Ughh, I went from never having any hair in weird places to feeling like someone put the malo ojo on me. The chin hairs, I can sort of handle. It’s the single rogue ear hair that really gets to me. It’s not even in the ear! It’s, like, ON my ear. Oh, and the random single dark hair that grows on my boob.
If this were Salem they would have used it as proof of a witch’s mark.
So are you telling me you don’t suckle imps through this lone, mysterious, dark hair?
Please. I do all my imp suckling through my third nipple, like any other self-respecting Bride of Satan.
I have a Single Mysterious Boob Hair too! WHY?
I DO NOT KNOW. Does yours seem to go dormant for a period, only to suddenly reappear out of nowhere, seemingly having grown two inches overnight?? Bc mine does.
I’ve got a bunch of nipple hairs. I pluck them! It hurt at first but now they come right out with no problem.
Nipple hairs, ugh. They don’t annoy me as much as the chin hairs – and they might have actually gotten better over the years? – but they are there.
Nipple hairs don’t bother me as much either, only because nobody sees them. And I don’t feel them either, because there are not nearly as many opportunities to touch one’s nipples over the course of an average day.
Chin hairs and toddlers, I have them.
For the screaming toddlers, turn on an audiobook and lay down on the sofa with a magazine. Just make sure all the windows and doors are locked and secured.
For the chin hairs, just wait until they start making little pre-hair pimples. Fun times.
The ONLY time it’s bad to be a virgin is when your village needs a sacrifice to the gods.
So far, I haven’t seen that happen in the US but then again there are cults, so watch out I guess? Maybe just lie about being a virgin to the village elders, but don’t get too elaborate with your lies because then you might be considered a witch or the devil and that might make you another candidate for sacrifice.
IMHO.
This was cool and funny and charming and all of that, and I mean that, but please, please, please not another advice column! It’s become a very tired form. The incredibly entitled and incredibly smug and frankly odious I’m-right-about-everything Captain Awkward has driven the last nail into the coffin of the advice column.
No.
ADVICE COLUMNS ARE THE BEST MORE ADVICE COLUMNS ALWAYS ADVICE COLUMNS AND MISANDRIST SPIDER ARMIES.
{You know, so long as you guys want to do them.}
Can the misandrist spider army offer some of the advice? I think they would have really unique insights …
I guess, but getting “destroy all men eat them up suck the blood from their bodies” as an answer to every question would get old eventually.
That would never get old to me, but I might be alone in this with my gender self-hatred, ethnic self-hatred, and blatant masochism. That disclosed, I thought Mallory’s advice was very…unique, entertaining to read and helpful. We should all be advised to “hunt for larger and more confident prey” from time to time.
No no, I respectfully disagree- always more advice columns and the comments that follow. This genre of deliberation is an unkillable category of human interaction, it survives even the worst and weirdest advice-givers (Cary Tenis, I’m looking pointedly in your direction).
Also, I do like how Captain Awkward farms out advice-giving duties to different humans and gives people a warm internet hearth to congregate around. It’s not the place for me, but it’s good to see it working for other folks.
I have no idea who this Captain Awkward is, but I’m pretty sure a captain doesn’t outrank someone with her own misandrist spider army.
Nobody is forcing you to read it. If you don’t like it, skip it. Problem solved!
So, was this “cool and funny and charming” or “incredibly entitled and incredibly smug and frankly odious”? Because if it was the former then I feel like I’m okay with another advice column… especially considering they have all but disappeared from The Hairpin (except AQC, thank goddess).
I think the backlash to the particularly frivolous, unsympathetic, and debatably stoned Dude And Lady rang the death knell for Hairpin Advice. AQC is just brilliant enough to transcend it.
You know, I had a whole long response written – about comments and this site and how The Powers That Be really do listen/interact with us and seem to value our opinions and blah blah but then I realized that what I actually wanted to say was quite simple:
It is a little rude, I think, to comment on the 1st iteration of a column (on a still new site), to say “Y’all are great but this idea is stupid, don’t do it anymore”. As already advised, if there is a topic about which you do not care, do not read the post pertaining to said topic. Simple as that.
Unless, of course, Mallory’s Misandrist Spider Army has kidnapped you and is forcing you to read every last word posted here, in which case I’m sorry.
I love advice columns! Particularly those written by people who’s opinions I respect (like Mallory and Nicole, as opposed to…Prudence or Cary Tennis). Sometimes there are things you can’t go to your friends with and it helps to have a kind internet ear to help you figure out your life.
black cat + love/hate relationship = story of my life.
I have two cats: one black and white, one calico. I’m basically screwed.
ha, this is why when we adopted cats, they were both black. i can’t always tell them apart, but at least it’s only one colour of hair! when it’s just too much, black clothes are a good haven.
My cats adopted me so I didn’t have a choice. On the plus side, the one who does most of the shedding sheds mostly white hair, so black clothes are the only major problem. But I like black clothes more than white.
Someday when I get to choose a cat, I will definitely choose black.
ME TOO I HAVE A MOO CAT AND A TORTIE
And my vacuum bag didn’t click into my vacuum properly, so when I opened it to find out why it wasn’t sucking properly (hurr), I was treated to the most delightful mountain of multicolored hair. It filled up half my garbage can (the other half was litter, so)
Cats! They’re lucky they’re cute.
CAT TWINS (almost)! I tell my cats, “You’re lucky you’re so cute,” all the time. My moo cat is named Moo!
Hardwood floors and shedding pets seem like a great combination, but they really aren’t. At least on carpet the hair stays put until you vacuum it.
I’M NOT ALLERGIC TO LIP BALM?
Nicole, don’t stop giving advice! You’re so eloquent and soothing and TELL ME HOW TO LIVE!
Also, person three, I have two recurring chin hairs at this point in my life.
Hey! I’m very fond of the advice column… keep it up.
LW #2, I was the youngest of three kids, and definitely the most difficult (like a shrieking, biting harpy), and my mom frequently lost her temper with me– occasionally we would play a game of chicken where I would claim that I was going to run away forever, and she’d be like, “Not if I leave first!” and then pack a bag and drink a glass of wine slowly while putting on her coat until I relented begged her to stay. Sounds kind of awful, but sometimes kids are kind of awful, and I loved her immensely and still do, and also now admire her ingenuity. She was always clear that she loved me very much but sometimes I drove her crazy, which even as a kid I could grasp. When your kids grow up they’ll be like “Thanks for not feeding us to wolves like we deserved.”
The leaving thing is the best. It was sometimes the only way to get my youngest brother to go anywhere or get ready. Oh, you don’t want to put on your shoes? Alright, fine, we’re leaving you and never coming back.
My mom also drew heavily on the creepy fairytale about the mother with the wooden tail, which was effective at getting us to stop bugging her while she was cooking or screaming at each other over Nintendo-related offenses.
My parents just let me run away. I did it regularly. I wasn’t allowed to cross either of the busy roads at the ends of our street, though, so I’d go sit at the end of the road until my mother sent my older brother to come collect me.
This is officially my favorite line in anything that has ever existed: “it may be worth teasing out whether or not he fears you have been saving yourself for his wizard’s scepter and will attempt to merge with him during intercourse. “
LW #3 I am gingerly fingering my copious lady-whiskers as we speak. What used to be a single weird hair that is between my chin and neck to full on sprouted teen boy beard (and stache). I usually wax than tweeze because tweezing doesn’t get the follicle completely out like waxing does.
But right now I can’t do either easily because they are dangerously close to to two giant mirror image cystic pimples with a couple tiny mean girls just to fuck with me.
What I am saying is: You are not alone.
I’ve never been a parent, but I have been a day care worker, and here are some of the ways they do it: 1. Having multiple adults in the room, so when one goes to the bathroom (or whatever), there is someone else to distract the crayon emergency or whatever. 2. Scheduling the crap out of the day. Seriously, our daily agenda was in like half-hour blocks, the same every single day. 3. Letting them scream sometimes! I bet it was an on-purpose favor to the parents that the time in between afternoon snack and pick-up was basically free play, often outside a.k.a. running around and screaming like banshees. So then when they get home they might already be a little tired out again and ready for dinner and bed.
Courage!
Don’t forget 4. Knowing that their parents will eventually come pick them up.
(I completely agree with very short time blocks/attention span expectations and lots of physical activity being key. But I also acknowledge that there are a LOT of half-hour blocks in a parent’s day.)
Thanks Lil! this is good advice.
Nicole please don’t sit. Sitting gives you chin hairs, I read something about it in the Times.
I have a standing desk! I have a standing desk and chin hairs.
> I guess maybe I just want everyone to stand up and say “I have chin hairs too!”
[stands] I have chin and neck hairs, too!
For me, the feel of them is worse than the look. They’re coarse and stiff like a cat’s slimmest whisker, so I can feel them rub against a scarf or a high collar, sometimes enough to produce a spot of irritation on my neck. So I tweeze them.
Here is my only practical advice on chin hairs: decide whether you want to have them lasered well before you start to go gray. My hair started turning gray-and-white in high school, so by the time my grown-up hormone shifts made those hairs prominent, many of them were white and therefore not susceptible to laser treatment. DANG IT.
Chin hair people! I am one of you, and my sister introduced me to this magical thing just a few weeks ago. I used to tweeze with only 50% success, but now I can buy one of these magical tiny razors. It is little and effective and also perfect for tiny mustashes if you are not a waxing person. But it’s really awesome for chin hairs, which always seem to come out of literally nowhere and show up in a mirror right when I am walking into a place in a fancy dress and have no tweezers on me.
I’m going to find these tiny razors! I have coarse black hairs all over my face, from my forehead down to my neck, and I basically just have to shave every day. But I can never get all of the mustache without giving myself horrible razor burn.
On the plus side, a friend recently told me that she read that shaving your face makes it nice and soft. Like a little dermaplaning everyday, she said. I want to believe.
hahahahha I love the review on the razor – “My eyebrows are GONE!”
When we move, I go outside with my cat the first couple of times. I watch for wolves, and he scopes out hiding places and escape routes and yards with dogs and other complex aspects of feline topography.
This is not a thing that is reasonable late at night, when the goddamn cat is terrified of the world outside the door and I want five minutes of peace. But in the bright light of a new day, fifteen minutes outside with a cat while they sniff things is quite pleasant.
Yeah. Cats need time to adjust. I would be scared to let the cat out in a new place for the first few weeks anyway. They’re a lot more likely to get lost or run away when they’re not familiar with their surroundings.
I have a chin hair and many nipple hairs, and the chin hair grows right out of the horrible witchy mole I have on my chin (one of the four awful witchy moles I have on my face, two of which exist on my chin right next to each other) so when it’s lurking just below the surface I can’t do anything about it, I am forced to wait for it to poke its horrible self out and grow long enough for my tweezers to get a grip on it. And then I pluck it with great vengeance, and drop it into the sink and drown it.
The nipple hairs I don’t get as mad at, for some reason. I just kinda pluck them when I notice them.
Chin hair people – home lasering, if you can afford it! I have this one. http://www.boots.com/en/Boots-Smooth-Skin/
Being half Iranian, I would lay money on having you all beat on the hair issue. This thing is a proper revelation. I’f be there all day if I were going to pluck everything, now I zap about once every couple of months in front of a movie when they start reappearing and that’s it.
What about using an epilator? Granted, it’s like a slow-mo wax and took me several months to get over the pain, but I think you get the same effect as waxing.
Something like this – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001GS6OB4/ref=o… – for ‘big jobs’
I found epilating made every single hair ever ingrow!
Tell me more about this! Is this really a thing? I kind of assumed that it wouldn’t work.
I want Mallory and Nicole to give me advice on my entire life forever. Even though I secretly know that all my problems could definitely be solved by taking to the sea.
went to the beach last weekend and definitely thought, as I was wading in “what if i just kept walking?”
I have definitely had that thought before. It usually ends in me going to re-read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
I love the home laser idea, if it really works, and regular laser treatment seems awesome if you’re a candidate, but for light-skinned light-haired folks who are not laser candidates ELECTROLYSIS is so worth it. It can be life-changing, truly. Feeling like a beardo = not a sexy feeling (for me). And having a stubbly five o’clock shadow that could be felt even if not seen (I hoped) – was kind of worse. And plucking gave me zits. Ugh. I’m so glad I finally dealt with it – I put up with it for way too long.
Also laser treatment is problematic for darker people? At least to the salon I visited, I went in with a darker skin friend and they turned her away.
From what I understand, there needs to be a substantial contrast in color between the hair and the skin. So in my case, pale skin + pale hair doesn’t work. It makes sense that dark skin + dark hair wouldn’t work, either.
Oh wow. I have errant hairs, am driven to despair by toddlers and have a strangely behaved jerk for a cat.
If I were a virgin also this thread would weird me out. Thankfully, I can go and pluck my chin hairs whilst screaming at my kids knowing that I am in good company.
LW#1 here. He dumped me. 🙁
Bigger and better, onward!
Ah, well. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. People can be flaky.
I agree with Selenana – onward!
Maybe, next time, don’t talk about the having or not having of sex on the first date? Have a few dates, make out a couple of times, then talk about it when it seems certain that you both do indeed a. like each other, and b. want to have sex on a subsequent date.
Sadly this conversation came up after items a and b were both in place. But it freaked him out too much. Oh well, I’m mostly past it and going on a date with a new gut next week!