Grrl Power #343 – Shear pressure
Well that’s probably the last time I draw a mirror in the comic. Twice the work for only twice the effort!
I’d be curious to hear Sydney’s answer to Peggy’s question. Why Sydney’ suddenly conviced that topiary is needed to fit in. What Peggy doesn’t get is that the question and answer has already run through Sydney’s mind, and instead of giving her conclusion a sanity litmus test, her ADHD brain has already moved on to solutions.
It’s weird that characters in shows almost never laugh at things that are supposed to be funny. Chandler says something funny and at best everyone smirks at him, or Tracy Jordan says some Ridikolus thing then falls over a railing on to Jenna, and Liz just rolls her eyes. I think characters laughing at funny stuff is omitted a lot of the time because then you’re betting the audience finds it as funny as the characters. If they don’t then it comes off like you think too much of your humor or your writing, so it’s safer to have all the other characters just shake their head. Sydney does a lot of funny stuff, and usually everyone just goes, “That Sydney” but this time I thought it’d be ok that it strikes Harem as totally bonkers – especially for the reason Sydney thought of it, and it’s always fun to throw Harem’s reactions to another one of her.
Thinking about it seriously, I image at some point in the world someone has made a Merkin bald cap, I can’t be the first person to have ever come up with something so superfluous. Probably for a movie, or glue one on then paint over it for art or exhibitionism, but Merkins are such a weird thing to have ever existed in the first place. I know trimming the hedge or even a little topiary hasn’t always been the norm, just check out anything with naked people in it prior to the 90’s, but the idea that someone ever thought to supplement pubic hair is absolutely bizarre to me.
When I write female characters, I do try and imagine their perspective on the world, and come at it from their view. Sometimes that has a larger impact on their personality than others. I’ve written about this before, but Maxima, Harem/Dabbler, and Sydney have personality traits that are the result of me wondering what I would be like if I had been born female. Harem for instance, loves being a woman. (Or a women?) Maxima doesn’t hate being a woman, but she obviously takes umbrage with certain societal expectations. Even little things, like how the guy is supposed to lead when dancing really grinds her gears. For some of them, their gender isn’t a huge factor, like Sydney. She likes boys but beyond that her life isn’t especially influenced by being female. All the other characters are mixtures of similar traits. So I feel I do an okay job at writing the female perspective. At least the tomboyish female perspective, admittedly. I don’t think I have any especially girly girls in the comic. The one thing I have probably missed the mark on, especially judging by some of the comments from the previous page, is that some women obviously do like body hair on guys.
I’m obviously not a fan, I think that comes from a few sources. One, I grew up on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, (and Stallone, Van Damme, Jackie Chan, etc.) and none of them have body hair. At least certainly not on screen. The lesson being the good guy has no body hair. Less hair = more good. I also grew up on comic books. No one has any body hair in comics because it’s a pain in the ass to draw, (find nearly any picture of Cyclops, Supes, or Captain America with their shirt off) unless they /do/ have body hair, like wolverine, in which case they have a comical amount. The other factor is that in nearly any movie or sit-com, body hair is played for laughs. Women not having shaved their legs, any mention of back hair, etc. Very rarely is there any mention from a woman like “Ooh, he’s got a hairy chest, I could get lost in that.” or something. On an intellectual level, I understand that is hugely the result of decades of white male perspective being sold to us as the norm, but it’s something that’s informed my psyche since birth. Essentially, I assumed that a lot of women generally tolerate it but secretly would be ok with less rather than more.
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Somebody needs to talk to Sydney about lasers.
She can use her pew-pew orb and save herself allot of time and money.
And the cost of a funeral
Maybe once she gets a few more perks.
Sorry, guy, laser doesn’t work on blondes.
Yup. Tokumei is right. Makes me glad I’m a brunette.
On the other hand, when a brunette shaves her genital region she leaves a “5:00 shadow”, similar to a dark haired man shaving his face. When a blond shaves her genital area it’s just as invisible as waxing or laser removal. Although I’m only guessing about the laser removal since none of my partners has ever gone that route…
I’m 1/4 Spaniard. The women in my dad’s family are pretty hairy. I’ve probably spent about 2,000 on LHR over the years. Pretty much everything from my waist to my eyes has been lasered.
Holy cow. I don’t know why but Sydney’s reflection is the mirror on the thrd panel creeps me out. Oo’
I’m pretty sure that’s because it’s only one of at least 3 layers required for the comic to look right. The lines, the colors, and then shading. That looks like it’s just the colors and someone forgot to add in the lines/shading (I think).
Oh wait, it’s also like that in the last panel. As is Harem’s reflection in the last panel. Maybe it’s supposed to look that way? It doesn’t look right to me though.
Not so much forgot as I’d spent like 6 hours doing touch up even after Keith colored it (I gave him the page with very sparse backgrounds) and I really wanted to get the page done, so I took a bit of a shortcut with some of the reflections. Like I said it’s unlikely I’ll add a lot of mirrors in the comic in the future.
You mean the second panel (third panel is just a little bit of her hair in the mirror, and it looks relatively ‘normal’)
It’s possible it’s a combination of distance and being a mirror image (DaveB‘s way of showing reflections)
Make bald merkins Dave! New income stream for you at cons!
Profit!
DAVE! Harem has nice bra there, but it reminded me about a page from a web comic I had read yesterday: MARINE CORPS YUMI
https://www.mcyumi.com/manga/marine-corps-yumi-10/#.Vci3uPntlBc
I don’t get it why title is all capitalized, but it is good & fun view about women in USMC. And even though it is manga ( = drawn by japanese), its manuscript was written by former marine, so we can expect it to be somewhat accurate. Any marines here who can confirm it?
I’ll have to check that out, it looks fun.
Yup, thank you for that link, looks fun (and hope Yumi does eventually become the President of Amerigo :D)
Thanks for the link. Was indeed fun. I wasted 2.5 hours going through the archives.
A bit of fair warning: the comic linked showed more fanservice than the comic usually has. There’s definitely a good bit, but it’s 90% military stuff. Very fun and cool, though; highly recommended.
Speaking of body hair – our ancestors had lots of it. Our way back ancestors that is – the apes. (cf. The Naked Ape.
Maybe the lack of body hair is just a sign of some people being further evolved than others?
It would be interesting to see a study of body hair vs IQ or something similar.
That’s treading some incredibly dangerous water. Body hair is largely a function of ethnic background, with Italians, Greeks and Scots being on the fuzzier side. I dare you to tell a Scotsman to his face that body hair correlates negatively with intelligence.
Of course it’s a function of ethnic background. That’s a common gene pool.
The question is what is the evolutionary advantage/disadvantage of body hair?
BTW, think about what your statement about Scotsmen implied.
to me, it implied that Scotsmans are hairy, which with your logic would translate into them being dumb, therefore the whole dare thing.
but that’s just my observation. i don’t know anything about them.
It also implied that all Scotsmen are violent, which is I believe the point Theskulker was making.
which is why insulting them is bad.
Well yes, unintelligent people do tend to get violently angry at the possibility that they may not be all they could be.
Is this an “intellectual” equivalent to “adummysayswhat”?
“If you don’t like being called stupid and unevolved, it just proved you’re stupid and unevolved”?
Same goes for intelligent people too. It’s true for pretty much everyone.
I don’t know how that would work, I have a high IQ, but I also have my own fur rug when it comes to the question of body hair, so am I a throwback to a prior age, or would I be the next evolutionary step in which the genetic anomaly of people losing hair reverts?
I have read that that sort of body hair is a direct result of how our body reacts to testosterone and other similar hormones. Females have less testosterone than do males, which is why females have much less in the way of body hair. For this reason, there is some evidence to suspect that the prevalence of body hair on males is a sort of sexual characteristic, much like the feathers on a male peacock. It also seems to serve to enhance the the sense of touch, as well as letting us function better in lower temperatures. The belief is that we have lost hair production in favor of skin pigmentation, as the hormones that lead to hair production are damaged by heat and/or static electricity. Additionally, the loss of body hair would have greatly reduced the areas in which parasites could nest, giving an additional advantage. Apes and other primates still have body hair because humans, who stand upright, actually lose less heat to the environment than do most quadrepeds (this explains why we have hair on the tops of our heads).
The interesting thing, however, is that, while body hair does not seem to have a direct correlation with intelligence, climate does. Or, at least, it seems that climate appears to have a direct impact on how much that intelligence can be made use of, either socially or personally. This may be a large part of why Europe, particularly the continent’s northern portions, have grown to achieve such a dominant position in the world–other places, which have experienced similar societal and economic conditions, such as Southern India, have never been able to achieve such a dominant position, (although the invention of air conditioning may have changed that). It will be interesting to see, if the world really is getting cooler, if that is accompanied by a worldwide explosion of scientific and economic advancement–if not, that would seem to indicate that some other factor is at work. But that is likely a discussion for another time.
The so-called “climate vs. intelligance” research is absolute bunk. World dominance does NOT equate to intelligence or sociability. In fact, such need to exert dominance contantly is more a form of psychopathy. That (clearly biased) research is perilously close to racist dog whistle code-talk for “Africans (or any other brown-skinned trpoics-dwellers) are inherently/genetically inferior to Northern Eurpoean (aka White) people”. World dominance of the “European” is due to availability if resources and willingness to ruthlessly exploit them (even to the detriment of the entire enviroment). Smog. Open pit mines. Fracking.
Testosterone certainly must be involved. It is definitely involved with male-pattern-baldness.
Sexual attractiveness would depend on the preferences of the females and as I haven’t talked to many pre-neanderthal women lately, I wouldn’t try to guess.
Hairs (and whiskers) are amplifiers of touch but minimal hair probably doesn’t do much for body heat retention. Interesting comment about static electricity. Not sure how much of an evolutionary driver that would be as AFAIK static electricity effects are not very prevalent in the environment. I can see where warmer climates would have an effect but, if what Nerdsamwich said about Greeks is true, they would be a contradiction to that theory.
The parasite reduction idea is quite widespread but I wonder if that was really a driving force. OTOH, walking upright – and especially running – is a major, major difference between humans and apes. Running for long distances – after game or whatever – generates a lot of body heat that would be hard to dissipate if covered with fur. Cats and dogs, for example, have only their tongues and must pant like hell to cool off.
Struggling with adversity or coping with challenges would certainly be a driving force. Witness the urban raccoons in Quebec. Lots of research going on up there. In just the past few decades they have far outstripped their country cousins in intelligence. Of course, humans evolve on a much longer time scale.
Keep checking on the raccoons. If any of them start wearing clothes and carrying heavy weaponry call your local Nova Corps office for advice.
As a genuine german, endurer of jears of history classes about one single time period, I don’t have to name, and being able to read all the original texts, from shortly before and during the WW2, and the maching secundary literature (i seldomly do, it’s depressing), I pride myselve to recognize Pseudoscience, Speciesism, Racism, Nationalism and any other kind of “…and therevore we are better.”-talk.
What you have read is shlightly touched with all four of those aforementioned “-ism” .
While some of your hair-theorie has a solid sounding argumentation, I wouldn’t give them too much wheight, evolution is often more complicated than that.
The heat-theorie at the other hand is enragingly funny.
Allmost every continent and every climate zone had its share of advanced civilisations.
The cause of our current boom is most likely a soziological factor. the humanity startet with no knowledge and no way to communicate or conserve the freshly learned (there is a huge difference between learning of Pi and actually having to find out on your own how to make fire, let allone how to use it safely, or find the mathematical relation between the diameter and the circumference of a circle). With the growing knowledge and the improvment in communication and archivation, ouer “intelligence” (a missleadig description. Cognitive potential or just potential would be better) grows expotentially.
One can actually corelate different inventions in the field of communication and education with the speed of tecnological and economical progress.
We sort of tendend to competitional behavior witch i am personally blaming on evolution and selection, so we can see over the last few thousend jears how some zivilisations Rise to new highs, just to tear themselves apart or being trampled underfood of another ethical/ethnical group shooting for the Horizon. [spoiler] I don’t blelieve anyone reading this will be alive when it is finally happening, but Europe and America are no exeption to this, I believe. (do not despair, at least some of our somewhat-great grandchildren will still survive an live a slightly less privileged live than we have, untill their genetik or ethic progeny will destory and take place of another future zivilisation. such is the circle of live. I, naturally, can not prove that, other than naming zivilisations and events that presumably ended them and whant to point out that this is highly speculative.) [spoiler]
To cut this short:
Be aware that there is somthing called ethnocentrism. We all do it, I love to feel better then other People, like everyone else.
Those books/internetsites you are reading sound interestening and fun. But I would not be caught dead using them as source for any discussion without making sure everybody knows i am not entirely serious.
Climate is a recogniceable Factor, and weather influences our behavior, but we adapt with the Time, so that this is not the greatest Influence on our Civilisation.
Our intelligence as species might be growing over time, but evolution does not work fast enough to explain the technological spurt over the last hundred Years, and this theorie about the direct influence of Heat on the general intelligence of the human Population is very farfetched, without anny valid proof and, in a discussion, easily proven false.
Allso there is a difference between correlation and dependance.
Most sociological sience is based on corelation, looking for things, that happen at the same time or shortly after another and assuming they are somehow connectet. Often the overeager researcher then assumes that one is the cause of the other.
Dependance, is often not proven, that means triggering one event and watshing if the other one will follow. Experiments on Humans, especially those affecting whole ethical/etnical groups are generally frownet upon. This lack of proofability makes it easy to desing your own theorie, that is as much proven as the ones the proffesionals are telling. that happens at every fringe of the known sience.
I know my englich is terrible, just bear in mind that I learned most of it reading stuff people wrote at Forums and commentary sections .
If my understanding of genetics is accurate (admittedly, my understanding comes mostly from paying incredibly good attention during High School and having good teachers), there’s a good chance that the genes that affect skin growth and regulate hair density are in a completely different chromosome than the genes that would affect brain development and therefore IQ. It’s easy to forget that humans have a total of 26 pairs of chromosomes, since the ones that get the most attention are the X and Y sex chromosomes. Furthermore, if hair growth and intelligence were related, historians could expect that to be reflected by societal norms: there would be an unwritten expectation that important people with lots of power should have a certain predisposition towards body hair (or against it). If that were the case, we’d be more likely to hear about the King’s Royal Waxing Salon than we would about his 30,000 gallon bathtub. Or, conversely, we’d hear sayings about how “a king never shaves what a king doesn’t grow” or something.
For my part, I can think of two ways that hair growth might affect intelligence (or perceived intelligence). Firstly, from a developmental logistic standpoint, hair growth genes could affect intelligence if the resources required for building hair were also required for developing brain tissue (which is the case, to some degree) and those resources were in short supply (which they generally aren’t)*. The other possibility that I can think of is more related to learning than anything else. If people with more body hair were to be distracted by that from learning important things, it could make it harder for them to learn and negatively affect their perceived intelligence. On the other hand, having to deal with that distraction could simply lead to them becoming more used to focusing in distracting environments, therefore leading to improvements in ability to focus harder, for longer periods and\or in more distracting environments.
*this brings up an interesting question: suppose that brain growth is negatively affected by body hair growth, but that the operation of the brain, once formed, is unaffected. Does this (or could it) explain why humans generally don’t grow body hair until after puberty? Is it plausible that Evolution decided to turn off the genes for body hair growth during the earlier stages of a human’s life in order to allow for greater brain development in that time? It is known that the brain ceases major development at around the age of 20, which is also near the time that puberty can be considered over. Could those two changes be related? If so, what does that mean for us? Perhaps the key to defeating the decay of an aging brain is gene therapy to negate hair growth? (OMGWTF?)
I think I’d better stop contemplating this now, and let someone else take a shot at it.
Humans have 23 paid or chromosomes. What if people that evolved in areas they had to build/plan/store had higher IQ because not doing it made them starve to death in winter, & people who evolved in the tropics had IQ being less important than running or outbreeding disease? If this was true we would expect to see 65 Asians suing Harvard because a perfect SAT for Asians/whites was not as valuable as just being black.
OK, here’s a theory:
The reason Lex Luthor was so smart was that the energy saved from having to grow hair was diverted into feeding his brain. And he could overclock his thinking process because the lack of hair made for better heat dissipation from all that extra output.
P.S.
Magneto’s helmet similarly acted as a passive heat sink to dissipate the excess energy from his enhanced mutant powers, keeping his brain from overheating as well.
(I had to pick examples from both DC and Marvel to keep it fair)
That’s certainly more practical than needing a cooling rod to be shoved straight into your brain.
… what the screaming octarine monkey F**K did I just watch?
8-)
Stripped of context, I guess that would be extremely odd…
That was from Farscape, Series 2, Ep. 19.
Just to provide some background, Josh:
The guy who needs the cooling rod in his brain is Scorpius. The reason he needs the cooling rod is because he’s a hybrid of the Scarran and Sebacean races.
Scarrans thrive on heat and create massive amounts of it within their bodies, but Sebaceans are especially reactive to high temperatures and suffer from heat delirium (and eventually a permanent coma called the Living Death) with it. He dealt with this dilemma by using a complicated protective suit and cooling rods inserted into his brain that regulate his body temperature. Gradually the rods heat up, taking the warmth from his body, and must be replaced with fresh, cool ones.
So there you go. What you saw was Scorpius needing to change his cooling rod (and John Crichton refusing to give the rod back to him).
:?
How are you defining intelligence? I mean, more hospitable climates make life easier, which frees more resources up for science and infrastructure and education and all sorts of stuff. You’ve shown that climate correlates with economic and political power, which is pretty manifestly true, yes.
Actually you could reuse a mirror you’ve made like this one, all you have to do is change the figures in the mirror, but keep the mirror itself. you have an instant reusable background when this happens and you can use it in different ways with minor changes. At least one artist I know of does that and it saves time having the basic background made and ready for use.
For Sydneys’ contemplation, waxing, while definitely more painful, is also far longer lasting than shaving, usually lasting 6-8 weeks between treatments. It also generally results in finer hair regrowth and very, very rarely results in ingrown hairs. It can, however, be more embarrassing, since few women seem to be able to “do it themselves” without help, especially the first few times. A qualified professional is always recommended. Instruction videos are on Y**Tube. Really.
There is one VERY good reason characters in sitcoms don’t laugh at each other’s jokes: after 3 takes, it becomes impossible for an actor to laugh convincingly. After a day’s shooting, it is impossible to laugh convincingly. (Heck, many actors can’t do a convincing laugh under any circumstances.)
Eye-rolling and smirking are easy to do, but laughing? Nope.
Maybe they should just learn not to mess up so many times they have to do more than three takes
For some weird reason, I enjoy listening to the various commentary tracks on my DVD movies as much, if not more than the normal soundtrack.
Anyway, in the one for “Top Secret” – which was made by the folks who made “Airplane!” – the directors were asked how the actors held it together while doing a profoundly silly dance. The directors said that after countless rehearsals and attempts at shooting the scene, it just wasn’t funny to the actors anymore.
Meanwhile, in the one for “Airplane!” – which was made by the folks who made “Top Secret” ;-) – the directors were invited to watch some sitcom being filmed. They noticed that the people laughing the hardest were a small knot of folks standing off to one side around a monitor. When they asked who those people were, they were told that those were the shows writers.
Which silly dance would that be? The one in the farm house when everyone runs up and then starts doing a line dance (or was it a tap dance slash Irish jig?)?
As a matter of fact, it was the one at the fancy dinner towards the beginning of the picture.
Wait, the one where Omar Shariff got turned into a metal cube sculpture?
Yes, that’s the one. Supposedly, the bad guys were trying to knock him off and put the cab he was in into a car crusher. Instead of being killed, he just spent the rest of the film staggering around in a metal cube.
Here’s the movie’s trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTHInCY_baA
Can still remember when she (can’t remember her name) goes to retrieve his package that was in the cab’s glove box (which doesn’t really make sense if it was a taxi before it became a cube)
Here it is, but unfortunately, it’s been dubbed into a different language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ouDO67wYMI
I think merkins were used mostly by olde tyme prostitutes. Back then hair was sexy, but lice was a problem. Pull out the body hair, no lice, but less sexy. Throw in a merkin and BOOM! No lice but sexy, sexy hair you can boil in between negotiations of affection.
Yes, you have it right: that was main market for the Merkins
You might even call the sale of these products a merkin-tile exchange.
I was under the impression that merkins were used to bypass nudity laws that affected strip clubs. Say, a local ordinance said there could be no “full nudity”, the stripper would wear a merkin on stage and the crowd couldn’t tell one way or the other, anyway.
Maybe now, but the Merkins are hundreds of years old (hopefully most have been washed over that time >.>)
In that last panel, Sydney looks like Odd Delarobia from Code Lyoko when his hair is wet/worn down.
Weird how she suddenly became attractive after you pointed that out… I thought I was over most of my teenage crushes XD
I like you. You’re my new best friend kthnxbai
I’m just going to say that there is no freaking way that Sydney hasn’t been effected by her gender. She’s a tomboy. That is acceptable in pre-adolescent girls, but when you hit puberty you are supposed to go all girly. Especially if she’s a boy crazy allosexual, she is going to feel pressure on her to fit the stereotyped view of women (which would totally make sense for her body issues.)
But for non-merkin options… Sydney’s hair is too light for laser in to work, it requires a dark hair for the laser to reach the root and destroy the troublesome follicle. There is a thing called sugaring that is less painful than waxing.
Btw, Sydney is totally near sighted, isn’t she?
Far sighted. She needs glasses for reading.
Oddly, that’s what I meant to say, but got my sigtedness mixed up. i’ve noticed that she is almost never looking through her glasses.
I really like Math, he’s my bro.
Yup, love how he is poking his eyes over the edge of the couch (wonder how long he had been hiding down there)
Fairly sure there already are Merkin caps, or maybe just thinking of regular Merkins they used for full frontal nudity shots in movies and commercials that let the wearer not show their genitals
For the record? Chest pelt. Rrrrrowr! That distinctly masculine and rugged feature is one of the things I definitely find appealing about men. It is often accompanied by back hair, and long and short, that all adds up to a high testosterone count which of course equates to a high sex drive and… well. There you have it.
You want smooth, chase a bodybuilder who competes. But for my money I’ll cuddle uo to a furball every time…
I’m inclined to disagree. I don’t like overly manly men.
Well I have to say I have sparse body hair but a VERY full beard and always had a high sex drive. Strange thing is when I was younger I had hairy toes but age and poor circulation have changed that. Now I get these long wiry hairs on my ears and joke they are werewolf hairs. Is there such thing as a werewolf Hobbit? lol
Peggy is wrong, women do do that… When I lived in Seattle, a bunch of friends of mine would hold a waxing party once every four weeks. I went sometimes but never got waxed because I zapped all my body hair off with a remarkably effective but inexpensive IPL device. I won’t say what areas I left with hair, or if there are any left with hair, because that not the business of anyone here.
A guy friend tried to borrow said device to make it so he doesn’t have to shave his beard and it didn’t work anywhere near as effective. He brought it back to me, told me it’s crap, said it doesn’t work, and proceded to demonstrate how it doesn’t work by doing a stripe up his leg. Now his leg has a stripe that’s almost entirely bald going all the way up. He doesn’t wear shorts anymore.
Before anybody says anything about the three stages of hair growth, I know, I thought the same thing. But apparently if you set this sucker up to the maximum level, only deep rooted hairs like facial hair will survive, and a few stragglers here and there. The stragglers that do survive grow so slowly, thinly, and light colored that you can just leave them alone, or put them through a bunch more treatments to kill them entirely.
I might note that my friends who do the waxing party in Seattle every four weeks organize said party using a popular walled garden style fet ish life style website. I won’t say more than that, because there are kids here. So if you’re in the Seattle area (which I’m not anymore) and you’re the sort who needs waxing done on the cheap, you might look up that waxing party. They’re pretty open to transfolk as well.
Oh, one more thing… The IPL device I used (still have it, but no longer have any real use for it) cost me $300, so it’s not cheap, it’s just a lot less expensive than repeatedly waxing or repeated laser treatments. It’s only been a couple years so it hasn’t paid for itself in savings on razor blades yet, but if you go by the expense of waxing, it’s more than paid for itself. Again, it doesn’t work too well on deeply rooted hairs. It can work on them but it’s not very effective. And being IPL, which is light based, it only works if you have light skin and dark hair. Sydney wouldn’t be able to use it, being a natural blonde.
Basically, it works for east Asians, light skinned native Americans, and caucasians with black hair. Even then, your skin must NOT be tanned… I used SPF50 sunscreen on every inch of skin before I went out into the sun for about 6 weeks before I even attempted to use the device on myself. If you have dark skin, you can end up in some serious pain, with some serious burns because it targets melanin, which is the pigment in both hair and skin. It superheats the cells with melanin, causing them to boil and die. As a result of this, I have inadvertently permanently bleached a few moles. Someone with dark skin might end up with severe burns. Sorry.
Peggy’s just never been invited to one of those parties ;)
Loving Gothamer’s hair style today
Merkins were from olden times when wigs were very common. The idea was having hair was a sign of wealth because that meant those people could bath regularly enough to not get lice. Same worked for pubic hair so for people who could not bath reguarly wigs were the solutions so that is where merkins come from. Also I think rainbow colored merkin is way more terrifying and hilarious then the baldcap merkin. This ends the weird old history hour.
I was wondering about that.
rainbow colored merkin… dammit, now I’m envisioning porn with clowns.
I find it incredibly strange that you think body hair (on a man) would be repugnant for a woman. Evolution says very much otherwise- thick, long body hair is a sign of a lot of testosterone, which is the “MAN JUICE” hormone, which makes men be more manly in all the man-like things that women would instinctively look for.
Like facial hair. Do you know why facial hair hasn’t been in style in the latter half of the 20’th century? It was because WWI veterans had gotten in the habit of shaving it to fit inside their gas-masks. That’s it. It’s strange to me that it’s taken so long for facial hair to start coming back into vogue, but it is nowadays.
I feel like beards, at least, should be something that the male supers should have to worry about, unless you’re going on an Exemplar (whateley Academy term) basis, where they’re ‘stuck’ looking like their subconscious ideal.
“testosterone, which is the “MAN JUICE” hormone, which makes men be more manly in all the man-like things that women would instinctively look for”
Do they really, now? Perhaps some women but certainly not all. The only “man-like” attributes that your statement implies is animalistic aggression and, perhaps, brute physical strength. Some women prefer more human-like attributes such as intelligence and companionship. After all, a man with a gun or the smarts to build traps can take down for bigger and stronger prey than himself.
And he doesn’t need the accoutrements of male dominance to prove it (or even the need to dominate in the first place).
Studies have found that women on the pill are attracted to a different type of guy then they are when not on the pill. Must really suck to get married, trying to have kids and get Frivorced.
https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20080812/bad-sex-pill
Depends on the type of pill not all have that effect.
Also the other thing happens, they aren’t on the pill then get pregnant and they suddenly find their SO less attractive.
I’m sure it was mentioned before but I missed it in the comments… Sydney is a at least partially interested in body hair…. her interview when joining ARC she mentions and has drawings of wedding plans for her and Wolverine.
Just thinking Sidney’s unknown orb, she has power flight, blasting etc. wouldn’t it round her out to have one of her orbs do healing. I can just imagine it one of Sidney’s unknown orbs dragging her to a wound and bouncing up and down on top of it until Sidney grabs it which activates it.
Possibly even regenerating heatwaves toe of peggy’s leg.
My guess is that she has one orb that can heal others (but not necessarily herself), and that she has one that lets her understand languages. Because otherwise, this group is in real trouble if they have to deal with people who speak something other than English.
Neither of these, obviously, would be something that could be revealed by ordinary testing methods.
? They both seem simple to test.
Languages testing: Hold orb, flip to spanish channel.
Healing testing: Go to hospital, hold orb, point at/rub people with trivial injuries.
And how long do you think she would last in the hospital randomly fondling patients before she got sent to jail minus her balls?
They literally cannot take them away from her.
Yeah, but are you going to do the experiments to see what happens if someone tries?
We already know what happens… Sydney cannot go far from the balls or vice versa… If you could trap the balls on one side of a wall and her on the other, then pull the balls hard and far enough, you’d slam her against the wall, or vice versa.
Basically, if she has them inside Tubey, just grab Tubey and go for a walk… It’d something like grabbing her by the ear. She’ll have no choice but to come along.
Not quite. The orbs cannot be pulled out of range, but pulling on them exerts no pressure on Sydney. See when Maxima attempted to pull the tube when Sydney was under the car.
They have offered to give Sydney a papercut to test for a potential medic orb. Translation could be tried by TV channel THEN foreign-language-speaker. That way, even if the TV isn’t translated, it could work in Person. If it doesn’t work for the TV but does in person, it could show it translates what they THINK they’re saying rather than what they’re actually saying. TV wouldn’t work that way since TV would only have voice to work off, not an actual mind, though mobile phone/radio/video chat would be interesting due to the lack of the other person not actually being there…
It definitely won’t be the craziest thing she says that hour
FYI, I really like Sydney sans glasses and with bangs pulled back. It’s a really good look for her, and it also makes good sense re: supers fights. They might consider Lasik surgery to correct her vision (contact lenses could also be a liability in a fight), and pull her hair back to maintain good peripheral vision…
Okay, I have to admit, I was completely lost with this one. Then, I did a Google search on “merkin”. I am formally going on record as saying that Google images is very educational.
Wouldn’t a bald merkin just be skin tight and skin colored panties?
Though that would also make you look like a barbie doll… ;)
That’s the point :D
on an unrelated topic to merkins..
So, erm.. Sydney’s face is looking.. kinda different lately. and ESPECIALLY in the last few panels of today.
I, uh… dont like change :(
Removal of body hair has cycled back and forth through history.
Recently, men only started shaving everything in the late 80s and into the 90s Prior to that chest hair was approved of. The main thing is body hair is related to testosterone levels, so a hairy chested man was considered more virile. By the same token, a woman with a thicker patch of pubic hair was considered to be more lusty (which from a guy’s perspective isa good thing). I don’t know if either belief is based on reality, but it makes a certain amount of sense as testosterone is related to sex drive in both men and women.
Mostly its fashion. Yes. Grooming is just as much about fashion as bell bottoms and skinny ties and everything else. And these days, fashion is often driven by people who want to sell you things. Be it a whole new wardrobe, or a new shaver.
and now I just wonder what a merkin bald cap is…. welp, off to google I am..
To save your search history a merkin is like a toupee for your pubic hair.
…And a Merkin bald cap is the same as a head-based bald cap, just down south…
You actually do a fairly good job of the varieties of the female psyche out there. (Honestly, we’re not all the way out there from Venus, just as men are not usually all the way out there from Mars.) As for male body hair, it does vary from lady to lady. I’m kinda turned off by back/butt hair, and I’d have to be really into the guy’s personality to even think of snuggling up to a fur rug on the chest, but I think that latter one was influenced by the waxed chests of guys on romance cover novel. (The former is a texture thing, yeccch, don’t want to feel that when hugging.)
The only one I think should be close to mandatory for adults, male and female, is shaving the armpit. Armpit hair provides a hella lot surface area for odor-causing bacteria to cling to, and that’s part of why guys stink more than gals; we’re expected to shave our pits, and y’all are expected to be hairy under there. (Merkin ‘pit wigs?)
…Also, thank you for the introduction to the term Merkin. I hadn’t known what those were called, before today. (Considering how much I do research on erotic subjects as a romance author, it is actually very rare for me to be surprised by anything, so gratz on that; you surprised me with new knowledge!)
I grossly underestimated the number of people who knew the term. I can consider myself an educator!
Admittedly, I never heard the term before, but I knew they existed; I just never knew what they were called. I also didn’t know how long they’ve existed until this comic page started drawing comments.
So heres a question, can Achilles grow a beard? It seems to be implied he acquired powers from an incident later in life, so his power source might not be genetic, or at least naturally genetic.
Achilles is unchangable. He can’t even change his hair style. I think it was joked once that he’s lucky that he had shaved that morning.
Given the decade he got his powers, his body hair is likely stubbornly (fortunately) intact.
Technically, Achilles can have his hair styled…It’s just that he can’t have a style that would involve cutting his hair. he just may be able to dye it, but the color probably wouldn’t last long…Until a decent breeze blows away the leftover colored powder after it dries.
Am I the only one who thinks that Sydney looks like a
hotdude in that last panel.I feel the need to say that I am a straight male after typing that.
>_>
<_<
She’s more masculine than most of the women in this comic, and without her glasses her eyes get smaller looking.
Damn!! She looks like a less wrinkly Math in that panel!!!! o_O
I think its because she doing a guy pose (and looking guy-smug). Plus since her chest isn’t that noticeable, it you can pass it off as a guy chest with muscles.
Closest I can find to Sydney’s request is this: https://www.mostlydead.com/products/nude-style-merkin-pubic-cover-up
Even closer to Sydney’s request is the Camel Toe Annie: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WvI-UttEiLQ/T7wp-YcCKlI/AAAAAAAABMc/T_n6ELFgLkg/s1600/331451_235864443126215_225824207463572_644895_922468_o.jpg
heh, except that’s not real, I was going for something that can actually be purchased.
I wonder if any of the male supers have issues over the hair thing, how many of them wish they could grow hair, or feel like they’ve been denied part of their masculinity. I mean, it has to be a “grass is always greener” situation to some extent, people always want what they can’t have.
I doubt the lack of chest/back hair is a huge issue for them, but the lack of genital hair might be–that is not an exceptionally popular look (‘manscaping’ sometimes gets trendy in the media, but that’s different than popular or common, and full-on shaving vs. just trimming the bushes back is also rare). Most of the women I’ve ever heard comment on totally hairless men end up using the phrase, “Feel like a pedophile”. So male supers are likely more inclined to look for female supers for companionship–they’ll at least be understanding about it.
I think Harem must love being around Sydney (which could mean all sorts of interesting things for the future) because for someone who can think/do approximately 5 things at once & must, by its nature, be relatively organized – someone as random as Sydney must be really refreshing to a person who is (experientialy) 80ish.
Damn you! I was better off NOT knowing what a merkin was… and damn you Google for knowing that!!
BTW, still enjoying the comic.
Is it sad that I already knew what a merkin is, because I’ve studied old fashioned… fashion?
In my defense, I wear corsets, like real ones, not the plastic fake “corsets” they have these days, but honest to goodness double steel boned corsets, and i was researching other old fashioned undergarments. I found out about merkins that way.
Do real corsets these days wreck the um, innards of the body? I’m guessing they don’t, but am just puzzled about how they don’t.
that depends on the style and fit of the corset, just like pretty much ANY kind of clothing worn by humans… and a lot of it falls down to “fashion” and whether or not it looks good at the time. heck, i’ve seen photos of women that have had SURGERY to look like they are wearing a REALLY tight corset around the waist… so it’s not just the CLOTHES that screw up peoples bodies for the current in-fashion look.
Ok ….. myth-busting time!
1- A corset is nothing more then a bra made w/out any elastic material to work with. Just like modern bras, comfort = fit. And just modern bras, women will only tolerate a certain level of discomfort in undergarments. And…. just like modern bras, corsets can and were made in a range from “practical support” to “sexy but nonfunctional”.
2 – No one has ever had surgery to fit into smaller corsets. Ever. The medical technology to even SURVIVE that kind of surgery was only invented very recently anyway.
3 – Photoshop is as old as photos. And those contorted poses you see advertising “S-bend corset” actually prove how much flexibility you have in one of those. (Its the model, not the corset) And the dramatic curves of hourglass corset? Its padding. Several inches of padding on hips, butt and bust to contrast the (normally sized) waist.
A corset is not a bustier, but a bustier can incorporate a corset
Not everything that looks impossible has been photoshopped (but that does not include the Kardashians: everything about them has been photoshopped)
I saw a video about corsetry once that had a guy in it who had worn a steel boned corset so tight, over so long a period of time, that he had an 18 inch waist. He thought he looked great, and more power to him, I thought he looked like he had been surgically gutted. It was positively weird.
Thanks for the reply guys. Interesting to learn about the truth around corsets. :)
We can thank Dave for initiating a spike in Google’s search statistics for the term “merkin”…
For some reason it is very easy to see what an older, more experienced Sydney would look like on this page. I could see her rocking the wiry smart-mouth charm
‘and then it got weird’ -how most conversations end around her methinks.
That implies that it is ever not weird. It can’t get weird because it was always weird.
That is such a stupid idea that there is not a chance in Hell it hasn’t been done.
…They have. It’s what they have models wear under the swimsuit so they don’t……err… show up?
Every time I think Math cannot possibly get less pathetic, and every time he continues to
amazedisgust me.More pathetic.
Note to self: Proofread your messages, dingus.