"End body art, bring back pubes"

by Duncan Fallowell
Why this, written for my weekly column in trendy online magazine The First Post, should have been censored by their editor I’ll never understand. All I said, perfectly innocuously, was ‘Can we have an end to body art?’ and wrote as follows:-

I’m not talking about making yourself look nice, nor about plastic surgery, nor girls waxing their legs, but messing up the appearance with piercing, tattooes and intimate shaving. It started among urban gays of course. Most things do. Hoodie-wearing was a gay fashion 20 years ago – now look at it. The same with body art. A few pioneers in Heaven nightclub. But before long you’d pick up someone sweet and fresh and one’s heart would sink as the clothes came off: first tacky tattooes would appear, then pierced nipples, then shaved pubes. Soon after, it was complete depilation. That ghastly plucked chicken look!

It got so bad that I started picking up straight men. Then they got in on the act. I blame Beckham and his waxed balls. In frustration I took to ordering up rent-boys, specifying beautiful non-art bodies. But they can be deceitful. When they turn up you discover them to be covered in special effects. One of them whined ‘But it’s only a bolt through my eyebrow’. Yuk, the worst! There are only seven natural rent-boys left in London and I’ve had them all.

When will people understand that being natural is the sexiest thing? Laurence Olivier was directing Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl and he said to her ‘Now, in this scene, Marilyn, I want you to be really sexy.’ She was completely thrown, didn’t understand what he was after, and fluffed take after take, until he said ‘OK, just be yourself.’

The moral is – bring back pubes.

Duncan Fallowell is the author of a number of novels, the most recent A History of Facelifting. He also writes travel books, perhaps his best To Noto. For further information on his work check out http://www.duncanfallowell.com/