Left unattended, my nose hair eventually will reach out at you from each nostril, as thick and bountiful as a late-summer corn field. This poses me all manner of problems, one being that it encourages my awful habit of proboscis exploration. There are times when I become fixated on yanking out a particularly troublesome stalk. Back when I worked at a business magazine in Cleveland, I would sit in the relative solitude of my office, gouging away, a junkie unable to stop himself. I remain shocked that I made it two years without someone walking in while I was knuckle deep.But this post isn’t about my crippling nose-picking addiction, it’s about my horrendous nose-hair problem. Which brings me to my great shame surrounding how I deal with those particular whiskers: I use a battery-driven trimmer. My shame arises from a remark by a reporter during a conversation way back when I was at The Roanoke Times in Virginia. We were discussing lawn care, and I asked him if he used an edger.
“Naw,” he said. “That’s too specialized an implement. It’s not manly enough, sort of like a nose-hair trimmer.”
“Oh, yeah,” I bluffed. “Who’d use that?”
I went back to my desk and looked at my nose in the reflection of my computer screen. Not manly? But, sweet mercy, how else can I beat back this quiver of nose arrows? I quickly decided to forget all about it, figuring if I just didn’t talk about it, I wouldn’t have a problem. And so, every week or so, for the past five years, I’ve continued to jam the trimmer up the old left and right.
But now that I’m an editor of a male-grooming blog it’s time for me to explore other options. Plus, I bet that Brent deals with his nose hair in some macho way like using a blowtorch. So I’m going to invest in some clippers, and see if I can’t do battle with the kudzu in my schnozzola the old-fashioned way. Expect a follow-up report in a week or so, assuming I don’t accidentally shove a sharp end into my frontal lobe.
- Craig
1 Comment
July 16, 2008 at 8:37 pm
As a guy who repeatedly hears from loved ones that he might want to, “you know, do something about that,” I feel your pain.
I, too, struggle to keep my nasal bushiness from interfering in my relationships and my self-esteem. I once even received a nose-hair trimmer as a gift — unsolicited, and ultimately to no avail.
I just hate using that trimmer, and I can’t possibly solve the problem one tweeze at a time.
Come to think of it, I guess I’ve sort of resigned myself to this fate. And that’s not so bad. Liberating, even.