Today's Column: The latest in teen fashion.
Every now and then I like to take the pulse of America's teenage fashion scene because you always find something interesting, something so way out there that you never would have thought about it. Navel rings come to mind. Tongue piercings. Baggy pants hanging off the lower hemisphere of the buttocks. Male earrings.
There's no end to the creativity and madness.
But this took me by surprise. I was visiting a high school recently, taking the pulse, when I made a curious discovery. Boys have no body hair. I stopped by the school weight room for confirmation, and, let's put it this way, I've seen more body hair in a Victoria's Secret catalog.
How could this be, I wondered? Evolution? A receding hairline that got carried away? A disease?
No. According to my "sources," they shave.
Are you making this up, Robinson?
No, what do you think this is, the New York Times? I've got anonymous sources that I didn't even make up who are perfectly willing to go on the record as long as I don't use their names.
According to my sources and my own two eyeballs, bare legs are waaay popular among teenage boys.
"Leg hair looks kind of gross," explained one of my anonymous sources named Nick, a 17-year-old boy. "It's rank."
(By the way, "rank" is a popular word among youth; it's used interchangeably with "gross," which was my generation's term for anything disgusting.)
Nick might have a point there. Male legs are pretty rank. Or they were. Now they look like they've been sent out to be waxed and buffed. Cameron Diaz should have such legs.
"A lot of girls like it," said Nick. "Either they don't care or they like it. Very few don't like it."
It does take some getting used to. My friend Paula was shocked when she found her teenage son sitting on the edge of the tub one day, shaving his legs.
"I thought, omigosh, he's gay," says Paula. "My only son! I said, 'What the hell are you doing?' Then my daughter walks by and says, 'Mom, all the guys do that.' "
Maybe she should have seen it coming. Paula works as an assistant to a dermatologist, who provides, among other things, body hair removal via laser. "All these younger guys are wanting to have their body hair lasered," she says. "Their chests, their arms, their abdomens, their legs. It's not just one group; it's everyone, but especially the jocks. They hate hair. I love hairy chests. It's very masculine. I ask them, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' "
Some boys use a razor; others are electric shaver men. Some of the tougher guys probably just scrape it off with a dull butter knife. Some use Nair. And then there are those boys who, concerned about that pesky, unsightly five o'clock shadow, use "Nads," which consists of applying some liquid goop on their legs, letting it dry and then ripping it off so that it tears the hair out.
"When you do it that way, it doesn't grow back for a while," says Nick. "Nothing for two months. And when it does come back, it's smooth, not bristly. But it does hurt."
(Why do I keep thinking I dropped into the middle of a Seinfeld episode?)
"If I get enough money, I'm going to laser my whole body," Nick said. "I'd even do my eyebrows — for the unibrow."
By the way, the process of creating the Ultimate Leg does not end with shaving. It ends with a visit to the tanning salon. White legs are out, too. White hairy legs are way out — and very rank.
So times have changed. If these boys had walked around my high school with shaved legs they would have been held upside down and had their heads dunked in a toilet. Now the kids doing the dunking would be sporting shaved and varnished gams.
Our next discussion of the teen fashion scene: Kids wear pajamas — to school.
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays.E-mail drob@desnews.com.