Category: Article

I conducted a little poll among the usual crowd—meaning Ben, Pete, and Don. I asked them what they thought about the body-hair issue. I was gratified by the wide variety of answers I got. (OK, here’s your mixed-metaphor alert: Buckle up, we’re going for broke on this one.) Pete says his wife likes a completely clean slate, and he likes it that way too. Don says his current girlfriend sports a “landing strip,” but he’s actually got a kink for wall-to-wall carpet.

I have to admit that my own taste is bizarre. I won’t try to excuse it or explain it, but I like hairy underarms and bare bottoms. There is obviously much disagreement on the subject. There are plenty of women who feel that shaving or waxing is not only a pain, it’s morally suspect. Their thinking goes like this: If you want your woman in any state but the natural one, you’re probably a closeted pedophile. The suggestion is that if you get turned on by hairlessness, you’re actually fantasizing about prepubescent Lolita. (Women who, without male influence, prefer to be clean-shaven have either bought into the misogynist myth of beauty, or they have some neurotic “cleanliness” issue.)

Now that’s a pretty extreme view. Are all men supposed to grow beards, because that’s our “natural state”? Because your hubby shaves every morning, do you have a fetish for preteen boys? I doubt it, and you can see where I’m going with this. The less extreme view says that men are trained by looking at porn to want Cupid’s cupboard to be bare. My view is that you should do whatever turns you on and stop apologizing or feeling guilty about it, unless you’re breaking the law. Enlightened women dress well and wear makeup not to support the hegemony of a sexist paternalism, but because it makes them feel good. Sometimes feeling good means feeling bare.

Just as an aside, I have to point out that science is no help on the matter. There is a wide variety of views among biologists and evolutionists as to the origin and purpose of body hair. The natural assumption is that since we evolved from primates, these parts of our bodies are further behind than the rest. Though there is no consensus as to what role body hair plays, there are actually some theories abroad that it is strictly for sexual purposes (it marks the target, it retains pheromones, it signals biological readiness for mating).

We all talk about waxing, shaving, and trimming when it comes to women—but what about men? I haven’t checked into the latest generation of men’s spas, but I’d bet there is plenty of waxing going on, and not just for back hair. Still, it’s not something we talk about.

A few years ago, I happened to be at the gym with Don, and in the flash between boxers and swim trunks, I noticed he keeps things pretty trim below deck. (At the time, he was dating a woman who was obsessed with getting a piercing down below the Mason-Dixon line, so there was some adventurousness already happening in the boudoir.) I was impressed, though I didn’t say anything. There’s something inherently feminine about a guy looking after his garden, and since then I’ve asked Don about this. He says in certain mixed company, more manly men automatically assume he’s gay and sometimes give him a hard time about it.

For men, keeping trim is an interesting exercise in empathy. You do it for yourself and your lover, and no one else. You may even try to hide it from the guys. Unfortunately, most men don’t make any effort, though they secretly expect it of their wives. Seems to me that one of the reasons Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is such a hit is that it taps into the vast pent-up reservoir of straight-male vanity. Regular guys have been neglecting their hygiene and looks for decades.

Ladies, how do you like your men? I realize variety is the spice of life. Some women like burly football-players, some like ’em hairy, some like ’em boyishly bald. My precious and I like a clean work area. Recently, I’ve enjoyed taking it all off down there, and she seems to like it too. Razor burn is always a problem, but we’ve got our secret formula. Three words: Magic Shave Powder. This stuff is a chemical depilatory supposedly designed for the beards of black men, but women have been on to it for years. What the hell, guys, give it a try. Like the barber always told you, it’ll grow back. You’ve got nothing to lose but your inhibitions.

Every small town used to have its hip record store, run by college dropouts who were looking for a volume discount on punk rock and one-hitters. The Lost Chord down in Mankato is where we first came across the Church, twenty years ago. They were Australia’s answer to the Psychedelic Furs and Bauhaus, hidden away in the import bins in heavy plastic sleeves. Theirs were lush, melodic productions full of stark and stylish images—and the records sounded pretty good too. After all these years, we suddenly realized that they’ve been chugging along without our involvement. We’d caught wind of this disturbing fact with last year’s After Everything Now This, and now they’re releasing album number seventeen. (Seventeen!) Not a lot of bands hang around that long, and they usually manage to do so only by going through a few drastic overhauls and makeovers. The Church, though, have stayed true to their original charter of jangly, moody, melodic alt-rock. In the absence of Echo & the Bunnymen, the Feelies, and a dozen other seminal art bands of the eighties, we’ll keep throwing into the Church’s offering plate.

Reports are sunny regarding David Bowie’s newest album, Reality. It’s a good thing. The Thin White Duke’s career (gawd, we always hated that sobriquet; gawd, we hate that word, “sobriquet”) has been marked by long lazy periods where his butt was comfortably installed on its nest of laurels. But once a decade or so, he gets up and proves he’s still got the goods. Yet, in the parallel universe of performance, his roadshow has always been a spectacle to behold. Put this one down in the category of concerts you’ve got to stop telling yourself you’ll see next time he comes to town. Bowie’s old enough now that there may not be a next time. Besides, you don’t want to be one of those dorks who waited until the guy was knighted before you saw him onstage. Target Center, 600 First Ave. N., (612) 673-0900, www.targetcenter.com

Maybe Governor Pawlenty’s idea of reinstating the death penalty in Minnesota will spur young people into some political interest, if not action. My stepdaughter was certainly disturbed when her research on the issue turned up the facts of the last Minnesotan execution in 1906, which didn’t go well. The hangman miscalculated the necessary calibration between the length of rope and the height of the scaffold, and William Williams’s feet struck the floor. Deputy sheriffs grabbed the rope and hoisted Williams up for almost fifteen minutes until the convicted murderer died by strangulation.

We all have our mile markers along the path of political ignition, some stranger than others. Do you remember the night Bill Clinton trounced George Bush? God knows, I do. That was the same night my fourteen-year-old foster daughter Erica snapped the braces off her teeth with pliers. But I didn’t discover that until the next morning.

On the night of the election, I was twenty-four years old. I had a colicky newborn in arm and a toddler at my feet. My chic, academic sister called from her cramped apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side as soon as victory was assured. She said something triumphant about how this election was really going to show the old boys club where they could go, now that old Georgie was a paltry single-term weenie. I stood barefoot in my nineteenth-century farm kitchen and let myself inflate like a balloon with hope like I hadn’t known since my own political awakening at the age of sixteen.

It was 1984, and I was an avid supporter of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket. I couldn’t vote yet, but I could stay up late into the night poring over my mother’s assigned college reading on the horrors of the nuclear world and systemic poverty. I could leaflet the neighborhood for my candidates and watch every televised debate. Ferraro was tough and smart and even pretty, with her arched brows and wide smile. It enraged me how the other side made fun of her. Mondale was sage and fatherly and good and honest. Of course they would win.

I was overly righteous and awkward as an adolescent politico, but I deserved some credit for my sincerity, which was so intense that it frequently ignited the wick afloat in my vast reservoir of ignorance and naiveté.

Not much had changed by 1992, when my team finally won for the first time. I crept into our foster daughter’s bedroom to herald the news. Except Erica wasn’t in her bed, or her room. She wasn’t anywhere in the house. She had climbed out her window and run off down some rural road to hang out in a friend’s basement plucking off her orthodontia, one tooth at a time.

That wasn’t the last disturbing episode from Erica, who remained a part of our family for years even as her primary residence kept changing as she transferred from one intensive therapeutic setting to the next, while she stayed with us on weekends. Eventually she ended up in my hometown of Duluth, where we continued to visit her until she emancipated herself from the system to become an exotic dancer, or at least that’s what she told me during one of our last conversations. I was not surprised, based on all that I knew about the abuses Erica had racked up at the hands of her toothless father, her disinterested mother, and a string of others who had swung through her life.

I think of Erica often, especially during election years. That girl really had something. She was smart, talented, and profoundly wounded. She had every reason to be consumed by rage, but she wasn’t. She was self-destructive, yes, but also unabashedly enthusiastic. She was resilient. She walked with grace and operated out of kindness and intuition an astonishing amount of the time. Sometimes I see someone in a car or standing in line at a store and I think it’s Erica, but then I realize she’s not sixteen anymore. She’d be closer to the age I was when I stood in as her mother. Chances are, I wouldn’t even recognize her, even though I can still picture the shape of her small white teeth that stayed straight even after she pried her braces off herself. Truth is, I saw something admirable in Erica’s do-it-yourself dentistry, violent though it was. Erica didn’t waste a lot of time feeling sorry for herself and she had the brains and the guts to make her own solutions when necessary. No doubt she’d have had a knack for politics, and I sure do hope she’s out there somewhere, getting by just fine, and raising a little hell in all the right places.

Perpetually touring Ani DiFranco hits the stage with a few of her favorite f-words—“folk,” “feminism,” and undoubtedly one more—as she continues her winter tour after a much-deserved monthlong hiatus. Intimate venues have always been DiFranco’s preference, and the Northrop will be a fitting platform from which to unveil tracks from her latest album, Endangered Species, due January 20. Ani’s always had a stubborn independent streak, but she’s gone a step further on Species, playing all the instruments and providing all the vocals. Ani also singlehandedly recorded and mixed the songs on an analog eight-track reel-to-reel in a shotgun shack in New Orleans, complete with passing trains and rain falling in the background. And you thought she couldn’t get any more raw! She’ll have a backup band in concert, of course, except during the album’s patriotic spoken-word pieces, but audiences will have to warm up to new drummer Daren Hahn, who replaces longtime favorite Andy Stochansky, gone to chase his own star after last year’s successful solo release Five Star Motel. Hammel on Trial, a fellow Righteous Babe artist who describes himself as the Beastie Boys rolled into one, opens. Northrop, 84 Church St. S.E., (612) 624-2345, www.northrop.umn.edu

We’re very excited to have Schuur back in Minneapolis. Through her decorated singing career, we’ve come to expect her to trot out the jazz and pop standards—from big-band arrangements to intimate nightclub combos. But her third record came out last summer, and it was a wonderful departure, pairing her with the one and only Barry Manilow. No, he just writes the songs and produces them—she sings them. (You gotta hand it to him: He’s a mensch and an ace, and if there were still a Brill Building, he’d be its landlord.) Rossi’s, 90 S. Ninth St., (612) 312-2828, www.bluestarjazz.com

If the Midwestern inferiority complex has a lot to do with our location in flyover country, imagine what it must be like to live in Poland, traditional butt of the “dumb” jokes of nations thousands of miles away. But there are other similiarities, too—the wide expanses of plains, for instance, or the starkly utilitarian architecture of our cities. The View From Here, a touring exhibit put together by the Columbus Museum of Art, aims to find the spirit connecting those of us living in the heartlands of the Old and New Worlds. That’s probably most apparent in the pairing of eight photos, four each, by Krzystof Zielinski of Poland and Ohio’s Andrew Borowiec; they are clearly kindred spirits in documenting their respective working-class hometowns. Three Minnesotan photographers are part of the American contingent, including a couple shots from Paul Shambroom’s terrific series of portraits depicting small-town city councils. MCP, 711 W. Lake St., (612) 824-5500, www.partsphoto.org

One can hardly recall the name James McNeill Whistler without thinking that he was a bit of a mama’s boy. In a fate similar to that of Norman Bates, Whistler the Artist has almost been overshadowed by Whistler the Painting, popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother” but officially titled “Arrangement in Grey and Black.” Whistler rarely named his works other than by color; he was hoping to force the art community to consider printmaking and etching as art forms in their own right rather than mere reproductions. A hundred years after his death, this exhibit celebrates his success as the most influential printmaker in art history and credits him for his lasting influence on later generations, including American painter John Singer Sargeant. Whistler’s colorful personality and turbulent life can be traced through these hundred works. They are taken from the institute’s permanent collection, and include a series of gritty etchings known as the Thames Set along with his Venetian prints, the swan song of a career in which a high regard for printmaking is fully realized. Move over, mama! MIA, 2400 Third Ave. S., (612) 870-3131, www.artsmia.org

When it comes to art, we’re never quite sure where the line is between a reading, a recital, a performance, and an exhibition. After sixteen years, we’re beginning to realize that maybe we’re looking at it all wrong. What better way to prepare for the Walker’s imminent yearlong shutdown than by reminding yourself that they’re not shutting down at all; they’re just going to be invading and inhabiting the city while their headquarters gets its makeover. Lots of grist here for anyone who’s grown weary of two-dimensional definitions of art, from spoken dance, to music video, to sculptural movement. Don’t look at the hand that points. Look at where it points: www.walkerart.org. All performances are at the Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis.