My husband has discovered the art of clipping (From Preston and Leyland Citizen)

My husband has discovered the art of clipping

11:18am Monday 23rd March 2009

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By Helen Mead »

It’s not the nicest gift to buy your husband, but when I presented him, a couple of years ago, with a set of nasal clippers, it wasn’t out of love, but necessity.

Far from rejecting the item, he was thrilled.

As men get older, they begin to sprout hair from places where it hasn’t grown before – their nose, ears and, often, back.

I first spotted my husband’s rogue nose hairs while travelling in the car.

I turned to face him and saw what I thought might be an insect’s feelers emerging from his right nostril.

He said he was aware of them, but wasn’t sure how to tackle them.

I wouldn’t have minded him keeping them – after all, he tolerates my hairy toes – but he wanted rid.

As yet, there is no sign of growth in his ears – another spot on the body which sees hair growth in older men.

One of my 50-plus colleagues confesses to plucking his, and 58-year-old Indian Radhakant Baijpai holds the longest ear hair in the world title, with ten inch (25cm) tufts sprouting from each one.

While men tend to come to clipping and plucking from middle age onwards, women are at it a good deal earlier.

I was a teenager when I first plucked my eyebrows. Although I am ginger-haired with barely-visible brows, like all young people I felt compelled to follow the beauty routines of my peer group.

So I borrowed my mum’s tweezers and set about it.

It was always an unpleasant experience; the sharp twinges of pain with each pluck, and the patch-up work with eyebrow pencil when you went wrong.

I shudder to think how they sometimes looked.

It’s decades since I last attempted to make my brows look like Elizabeth Taylor’s, and I thought I’d put the hideous process behind me.

I was horrified, then, to hear my 12-year-old daughter mention an eyebrow-plucking session at a party she recently attended.

One girl had, apparently, been teaching another the technique. “I don’t want you doing that!”, I screeched, imagining a rapid progression to leg waxing, electrolysis, laser treatment and goodness knows what else.

While blokes pluck to avoid stray hairs cramping their style, women do it for reasons of vanity and, with two daughters, I know I will have plenty of battles to come.

“But daddy does it,” they will no doubt throw at me, as they hover in front of the mirror with a Ladyshave.

And I won’t be able to contradict that because his clippers are in daily use. I wish I hadn’t bought them – without them he would surely hold the record for longest nose hair.

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