Idle leg-hair blogging

I was shaving my legs today, and as leg-shaving requires very few brain cells, I got to thinking about age-appropriate permission-based rites of passage that girls experience. Like ear-piercing, wearing make-up etc., that our mothers may or may not have expressed an opinion on. A la "You can't wear make-up until you are 16" or "you can wear eye shadow but not lipstick," etc.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why leg-shaving was piled there in my memories as something I had had to ask permission to do. I could see why mom might weigh in on certain female ornamentation, but I couldn't think why I would have felt I had to ask permission to shave my legs. I distinctly remember my mother saying something like "Your leg hair isn't even noticeable, don't worry about it," so I must have actively asked.

Of course I DID worry about it, because I was a pre-teen and pre-teens obsess about everything. Heck, I worried that my arm hair was too dark! So why didn't I just go off and buy a plastic razor or get one from a friend? I had an allowance to spend. It's not like my mom really would have cared if I actually shaved my legs or not.

Was I really so shy that I thought I'd get in trouble? I mulled this over for quite awhile, wondering what kind of emotional cripple I'd been if I was cowed by something so simple as that.

It wasn't until I was half-way through my second leg when the proverbial light bulb went on. Did they even HAVE twin-blade disposable razors for women readily available when I was a kid? If they existed, they probably weren't hanging in cheap 4 packs in every checkout lane. To shave my legs I would have had to borrow my mom's electric razor. Electric razors, back then, were the kind of equipment that was A) pricey, and B) more likely to wear out with increased use, so a Mom was not likely to say to her pre-teen kid, sure, go ahead and play with my electric razor. And there's no sneaking something that buzzes like a 17-year cicada.

I contemplated the disposable piece of plastic in my hand, amazed. One more rite of passage dispersed by cheap mass production. Huh.

I wonder what I'll think about the next time I shave my legs.