The Weekend Review by the Nerve staff

Hair Apparent

For a minute there, we thought pubic hair was going the way of the trucker hat and Michael Bloomberg’s approval rating. Just as we were penning a TWR requiem for the muff — to the tune of the Bonanza theme song, no less — the ladies of the Far East have stepped up to the plate en masse. A few months ago, we reported that Japanese women were coloring and styling their bikini areas to mimic David Beckham’s trademark faux-hawk. This week we learned that the Korean peninsula is crying out for a lot more bush. Yes, the latest trend in South Korea is pubic hair transplantation. "In the West, women try to reduce their genital hair as much as possible, but in Korea the trend is for forestation," beamed a prosperous pubesmith. The operation is conducted under local anaesthetic and bandages can be removed after just one day. In Korea, a mass of pubic hair is considered a sign of fertility, which was why many women are having hair transplanted from their heads to the tune of $2,800 — approximately as much as a Brazilian woman would spend on waxes in a lifetime. — Grant Stoddard

You’re So Vain

I am annoyed with Brazil. Here are my grievances.

1) Bikini waxing. This is the country that made pubic hair a widespread concern. No one thought about this too much before stupid Brazil and its stupid wax rolled all up in here. Now, whether you wax or not, you have to devote some mental energy to the topic. This is a waste of brain.

2) Samba. Maybe there is something wrong with my ears and brain, but I imagine that subway gropers enjoy samba music. Samba creeps me out.

3) Hotness. Hotness should be distributed evenly among the regions of the world. But Brazil is a total hotness hog. It's rude.

I was happy, therefore, to learn that Brazilian women were paying for their unlawful hotness with massive amounts of self-loathing and neurosis. A study conducted by Avon cosmetics — a firm long renowned for its sociological research — has determined that Brazilian women are the vainest in the world. Ninety percent of them classify beauty products as essential rather than a luxury; half of them are prepared to undergo plastic surgery. When asked about their country's endemic urban poverty, the women smiled politely and asked the interviewer to repeat the question. — Carrie Hill Wilner

Mom Gone Feral

The U.S. judicial system acknowledges that there are different categories for crimes. Murder One is murder in the first degree. What was suffered by a sixteen-year-old boy in Shenango Township, Ohio, a few weeks ago should be Embarrassment One. (It’s as bad as it gets. Using this new Shanago scale, having your entire extended family walk in on you while you're manually relieving a Bassett hound would be classed like, Embarrassment Nine.)

This week, twenty-seven charges were leveled against thirty-four-year-old Patricia Johnson in common pleas court. Here’s why. A few weeks ago, Johnson, her son and three of the boy's friends met up at 10 p.m. intending "to ride go-carts." The go-carts were already rented out. The imaginative and resourceful mom wasn’t about to be swindled out of a fun night with four strapping young lads, however. She immediately swallowed a handful of prescription medication, bought a thirty-pack of beer, swerved her way to a nearby Radisson Hotel and rented a room. Eyewitnesses said her car left the road entirely on two occasions.

Police reports indicate that once in the room, Johnson gave the boys beer then tried to touch their penises and lick their faces. She then handed out $1 bills, told them she wanted to be a stripper, asked them to put the money in her panties, exposed herself and told the boys to spank her. According to police, after the boys declined her offer of beer, Ms. Johnson had a screaming fit trashed the room. Mom’s mania apparently hadn’t dissipated by the morning: she demanded that the boys get her breakfast. “When one said he did not have a license, she told him to go anyway,” said incredulous cops. Johnson later asked the boys to get her something to drink, which also required driving. Finally, she drove the boys home at speeds up to 100 mph. Ms. Johnson's son was reportedly humiliated by his mother's behavior — shocker! Three days into the school year, the poor lad will never hear a “... your momma” punch line the same way again. — Grant Stoddard

Crazy/Beautiful

You know when there's something wrong with your head or face, like when you have a peeling sunburn and you think everyone is laughing about how hideous you are, but actually, they don't care about you or your blemish? Well, multiply that experience by forever and everyone, and you have reality. Researchers at the University of Missouri and St. Louis University have determined that both women and men consistently rate themselves less attractive than others rate them. In particular, women saw themselves as heavier than men did, and men saw themselves as less muscular than women saw them. This is scientific proof that not only does the world not revolve around you, but all the members of the opposite sex are trying to kiss your ass. Once again, science shatters your worldview but improves your quality of life. — Carrie Hill Wilner

Rocket Man

American independence from the British crown was a dramatic affair: gunpowder, rockets, cannons, flares, property razed to the ground. Thus, for 200 years, American independence has been commemorated with fireworks. Australia's independence from Britain was a less dramatic affair. It was pretty much heralded by a coy smile and a shrug on both sides. Possibly a ceremonial shrimp was thrown on the barbie, and good Queen Vic found time between lunch and dinner to sign something. That is why we must forgive Aussies for not treating fireworks with the reverence they deserve — for example, they stick them in their asses.

Yes, this week a twenty-six-year-old man suffered a fractured pelvis and severe burns to his genitalia after a firecracker exploded between his buttocks, leaving him incontinent and sexually dysfunctional. After an ambulance responded to reports of a man hemorrhaging from the buttocks, said man was transported to the amusingly named Wollongong Hospital in a serious but stable condition. He's now the proud owner of a colostomy and a catheter. Surgeon Robert McCurdie likened the man's condition to "a war injury" and speculated that the man had stumbled and fallen on the firecracker. (Sure, Doc. Like the guy that slipped in the melon patch and ended up with a seven-pound honeydew in the keister.) It is not known whether the man had been imitating the Jackassstunt wherein Johnny Knoxville and pals shot fireworks out of their ass cracks. — Grant Stoddard

Mind the Gap

Institutional attempts to catalogue Youth Culture are always pretty funny. Inevitably, they widen the generational gap instead of narrowing it. There's nothing more profoundly alienating than your father telling you not to overdo it on "the ganja."

In a world full of this clumsy anthropology, Beloit College's "Mindset List" stands out. Written to give professors a cultural reference point with which to understand the class of 2007 (born, for the most part, in 1985), it is possibly the most amazing and perplexing thing I have ever read. It includes the following facts about today's college freshmen (my notes in parentheses):

2. They are not familiar with the source of that "Giant Sucking Sound."

(Is it some sort of sea creature? Or maybe the void in my soul? No one in the office knows what this means.)

4. "Ctrl Alt Del" is as basic as "ABC."

(When they are not using their magic radar-signal language, they communicate through restarting their computers over and over again. It is a bit like Morse code. But wholly evil.)

8. An automatic is a weapon, not a transmission.

(This is because they are all guerrilla warriors, foot soldiers in the Army of the Night. Your time has come, America.)

17. There has always been some association between fried eggs and your brain.

(Put down the crack pipe.)

19. They have never been able to find the "return" key.

(Um, it's right here…)

(See?)

(There it goes again! Can I get a biscuit? *)

48. Killer bees have always been swarming in the United States.

(Ha, you'd forgotten about killer bees, hadn't you? Well, while you were living your quiet, ignorant life, these teenage beemasters have been gathering force. They actually ARE part bee, did you know that? And there's nothing more dangerous than a bee-child with an automatic: weapon, that is, not transmission.)

*Full disclosure: I was born in 1981, so I should mention the possibility that something strange happened in those four intervening years which, indeed, left today's eighteen-year olds unable to find the return key. — Carrie Hill Wilner

About The Weekend Review

The Weekend Review is Nerve's sociopoliticoanthropological roundup of news about sex, gender, relationships, and whatever else we find interesting. Did you know that if you fold an orange juice label just so, it looks like a little mouth?

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