The Vine: March 2, 2006
I have an odd problem. It’s related to armpits. I believe you are a, erm,
dewy person, but I don’t know if these things overlap. I get itchy, irrited
armpits whenever I shave. I suppose it’s razor burn. Here is the normal
schedule:
Day 1: Shave. Lovely smooth armpits.
Day 2: Irritated, itchy armpits.
Day 3: Irritated, itchy armpits.
Day 4: Hair grows a bit, starts to feel normal.
Day 5…n: Normal non-irrited slightly fuzzy armpits.
Now you or some readers may think, “Ew, gross, you don’t shave your armpits
for several days at a time?” Well, my reasons are many. First, I’m not
shaving irritated itchy skin. Second, when the itchiness goes away, I’m
inclined to not immediately recreate the experience. Third, frankly, I’m a
lazy shaver and I don’t wear tank tops to work.
I currently use a Venus razor (blue! not pink!) with Aveeno shaving cream.
My problem seems to occur whether I have a new or old razor or whether I use
a girly scented shaving cream or not.
I usually put lotion on right after shaving and slather on more when it gets
all itchy. Do my armpits hate me? I try to be efficient shaving and don’t
criss-cross all over.
I’ve considered getting my armpits waxed for days-at-a-time smoothness.
While I’ve had leg and bikini waxes, getting the hair ripped out of my
armpits doesn’t seem like a fun experience. I don’t mind fuzz, but there are
times when I want to shave and not itch. Any suggestions?
Sincerely,
Maybe I should move to Europe
Dear Viva Armpita,
Shaving every few days, I use a crappy old blue Bic, the cheapest razor available, and no shave gel or anything; I’ve never had a problem. No ingrown hairs, no itching, nothing. Everyone’s different, of course, but the problem here might be that you’re bringing too much weapon to the fight.
Don’t shave for a week; you say you don’t go sleeveless to the office, so it shouldn’t be a major hardship unless you have an S.O. who’s really militant about your having spotless pits, which is his/her neurosis anyway, kind of. The next time you shave, use a regular razor, the most basic you can find — you just really don’t need three blades or a crazy-thick moisturizing strip. Don’t use gel. Don’t moisturize afterwards. See what happens.
I think the issue here is that you’re just throwing too much stuff at the skin under there that it just doesn’t need and isn’t reacting well to. Gel, lotion, then deodorant…it’s overload. Strip down your shaving routine to the basics and see what happens.
I don’t think waxing instead is necessarily the answer here (and if the problem is actually ingrown hairs, you definitely don’t want to try that as an alternative; it’ll just make things worse). Try doing less instead of more, and if that doesn’t work, make an appointment with a dermatologist.
Hey Sars,
I am buying my sister in law a tin of Jacques Torres hot chocolate (wicked, of course), and I want to get her a pair of really nice, modern, funky-looking mugs or demitasse cups to go along with it. I’ve come up empty by looking at Pottery Barn and the MoMA Design Store, and just fucking googling “coffee mugs” turns up ones of the “I’m a perfect ten…INCHES” variety. Bed Bath and Beyond has a bunch, but…eh. I’m kind of hoping for something offbeat, not something she could walk in and buy for herself. And definitely, definitely nothing with snowflakes on it. Any ideas?
Thanks very much!
A
Dear A,
AB Chao got me a super-cute demitasse/espresso set for Christmas; the brand is NotNeutral. I also really like the stuff at Fish’s Eddy — Wing got me the baseball-pattern giant coffee mugs and I use them every morning. (I’m not seeing those on the site right now by their patterns change all the time.)
Other places to try:
CB2
Elsewares
Marimekko
Hi Sars,
I’m canvassing a lot of opinions on this issue, and as I know your advice is always sensible, and because I don’t think parents are the only ones with good child-related views, I’d appreciate it if you could let me know how people know they’re meant to have kids.
I’ve just turned 31. I’ve been happily married for nearly seven years. My husband and I are steady, reliable, intelligent people. We both like the idea of having children, but neither of us are feeling a burning urge to be parents, and we can’t figure out if that’s normal, or if it’s a sign that we shouldn’t do it. Virtually all my friends have had babies in the last couple of years, or are pregnant now, and I thought that would kickstart my maternal urges, but so far…nothing much. My two sisters have seven kids between them. I did think I was ready a couple of years ago, but without being too flippant I honestly think I was just bored, and thought it was the thing we should be doing at that stage of life. And then I got a job I liked, and now it’s all gone off the boil.
Ideally we’d be able to just let nature take its course and see what happened, but we need to make a conscious decision: he has his own — fairly young — business, and isn’t yet in a position to draw a proper salary. I’m progressing pretty well in my career, and even if we had a baby I feel like I’d still want to work, but the way things currently stand I’m the breadwinner, and we couldn’t afford a child. So, we need to figure out whether or not we want to try for a baby and use that as a bit of a deadline for his business to be generating enough money — always remembering that my maternal grandmother went through her menopause at 39, and so we don’t necessarily have another ten years to make this decision.
I don’t want to not have a baby and live to regret it. However, I also don’t want to take the chance and have a baby if we’re not meant to do it. How the hell do people know? What does that feel like? Or, what does it feel like to definitely know you don’t want kids? I think one of our problems is that we’re really happy with each other and our lives, and are actually quite hesitant to change it. Is that a good sign that the status quo is too good to change? We don’t want to have kids just because “it’s the thing to do” — and we’re lucky; we get no pressure on it from either sets of parents (my mother has enough grandchildren to be going on with, and his mother is just super-cool, even though he’s an only child and she could be forgiven for obsessing on it).
I also think I’m increasingly terrified of childbirth — the disadvantage of waiting is that you hear everybody else’s gory stories. And I may get arrested or something for this, but I don’t particularly care for babies. I think they’re cute, but I never want to hold them, and I only really like kids when they can talk. I’m sure this would be different with my own baby, but what if it’s a big flashing neon “DON’T HAVE A BABY” sign?
It feels like this is one of the biggest decisions of our lives, and we’re really lost. I’d appreciate any advice or insights you can provide.
Thank you in advance,
Broken Maternal Clock
Dear Maybe It’s Right On Time,
First of all, childbirth is not a necessary prelude to parenting, just to get that out of the way. You could adopt, or try to, if you feel like giving birth is itself not something you want to do and if early menopause is a concern.
As to the larger question…I just don’t know, and I think if there were one answer that applied to everyone, or one based on what you’ve told me, we’d live in a much different world. I will say that the fact that you’ve given it some thought, that you can admit your ambivalence about it, means you’re probably better equipped for it than you think…but on the other hand, that’s not always true either. Sometimes that ambivalence never goes away; other times, parents who may have gone into the whole thing motivated more by societal pressures, or outdated definitions of what Your Own Family has to mean, turn out to be fabulous parents. There isn’t one measurement here.
I don’t think anyone is ever entirely “ready” to have kids; it’s too big a job and too big a change for most people to go into it brimming with smooth confidence. But what I’m getting from your letter, frankly, is that you’re not just not ready; you’re…not really interested, at least right now. And that’s fine. Our culture has a way of implying, especially to women, that it isn’t fine, that not wanting kids means there’s something “wrong with” us, we’re arrested-development cases or careerist bitches (which, of course, is never a problem if it’s a dude with the job ambitions) or broken emotionally some other way — that not having kids is not a “natural” choice for us, in other words, and if we don’t have kids, we’ll always regret it and die alone and wah wah. And of course some women do regret not having kids, but…some women regret having them, too. Each of us is different, and each married couple is different, and that tends to get lost a lot of the time in this discussion, that we can’t always make decisions based on what the culture thinks is our role.
Trust your instincts. Your life is your own; if you want to share it with a child or children, that’s great, but if you don’t, you don’t need to talk yourself into it. Do what feels right for you; trust yourself and your husband to work it out.
I am 25 years old, and a returning college
student. Everything is hunky-dory, and I’m doing
wonderfully in all my classes — I’m enjoying
school much more this time round, and most of my
professors adore me.
Here’s the problem: I’m insanely attracted to one
of my professors (I’d say he’s about 30-ish) —
sexually, intellectually, physically, and so
forth. He seems to enjoy having me in his class,
but his interest could be purely intellectual.
Today I went to his office on the pretext of
asking him a question (about something I already
knew). There was PALPABLE sexual tension in the
way he looked at me, his body language, et cetera. (Or
maybe I’m just rabid, and imagining it! Who
knows.)
I honestly don’t know what to do. Had I met this
guy in my ordinary life, I would have shagged him
senseless. Now there’s ethical issues, baggage,
problems galore. What would you do?
I need advice BADLY.
Hopeless and Horny
Dear H&H,
I would do nothing. Student-professor relationships are not appropriate, and most university communities expressly forbid them, for good reason. If you absolutely must see this man naked, either switch out of his class or wait until the semester is over and he’s no longer in a teacher role with you. Until then, review the university code of conduct, buy a vibrator, and keep the relationship professional.
I am in a graduate program at a large university. I’m in the first of
a three-year program with a handful of other people. This first year is
actually catch-up undergraduate work since we’re in a grad program
outside of our majors. Since it’s just us few graduates in with the
undergraduates, we’ve kind of had to bond. We all get along in class
and spend time together outside of class on occasion. We’re going to
be in very close contact for the next couple of years, so the fact
that we get along so well has been important to us.
I’m close with one girl in particular, and she’s the one I’m writing
about. She told me around the start of the semester that she got the
test bank that goes with one of our textbooks. The professor of the
course uses the test bank because he doesn’t write test questions well
(he had to throw out 1/4 of a test last semester because the questions
were ambiguous). So this girl can study the test bank and ace all the
tests (and has). She’d most likely do well anyway, but in this case,
she’s doing so dishonestly.
As far as I know, I’m one of two people she told about the test bank.
She offered to let me study with it, but I haven’t done so, and don’t
intend to. I didn’t think that her having the test bank would bug me,
but it has. We just had another test in that class, and I found
myself distracted by the fact that she had already memorized all the
questions. She does well in her courses anyway (she doesn’t work and
studies pretty much all day long) so nobody has any reason to suspect
something’s up even though she’s scoring perfectly on the tests and
taking only about 20 minutes to finish them.
My question is — what should I do, if anything, and how? If I tell
the professor (or my advisor, or another professor) that “somebody”
has the test bank and she’s confronted, she’ll know it was me (I’m
pretty sure the other person she told has been using the test bank as
well). If I don’t say anything, she’s getting away with cheating on a
pretty big scale.
Does it sound like I just have sour grapes about this issue — I’m not
making 100% on the tests, so I’m miffed that she is (I have an A in
there, by the way)? She does work hard in other classes, and would
probably still have a high A even if she quit using the test bank
altogether, so I don’t feel like she should be kicked out of the
program, which is what would happen if she got caught. But she’s
cheating! And it’s wrong! And I do feel like her cheating affects me
in some way — when it comes time to compete for (not many)
assistantships, professors are choosing from people with very close
GPAs — her having a 100 average in a course could (il)legitimately
force one of the rest of us out of an assistantship.
I’ve been going
back and forth on this since our last test, so I thought I’d ask you.
This way, I can get advice and I’m not endangering her stay at the
school by doing so. I can’t really sort out my motives here or what
really matters in the situation, but I’m hoping you can cut through
some of that.
Thanks for the help,
Tammy Tattletale
Dear Tammy,
At my university, the honor code was pretty clear — if you cheated, you got kicked out, and if you knew someone else had cheated and said nothing, you got kicked out for that too. So, your first move is probably to look up your school’s policy on cheating and make sure you’re not violating it by keeping silent. Eventually, someone’s going to rat her out, and if it wasn’t you, and should have been? You’ll both get expelled.
Your second move is to remember that it isn’t you who’s endangering her stay at school. She’s doing that to herself, by cheating, and on top of that, she’s making you her accomplice. I know you want some way to rat her out without having to do it yourself, but: tough. Not the world we live in. If you don’t want her taking advantage of that extra edge, you will have to put a stop to it.
It’s an uncomfortable situation, and she probably won’t like you much, but again, it’s her own fault — she cheated, and she made the mistake of telling other people. Wrong, dumb, next! Find out what your obligations are here, and if you have to turn her in, do it, but most institutions of higher learning are quite clear on what you’re supposed to do in these cases and what will happen if you don’t. Ask your advisor.
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