Dear Etiquetteer:
I’ve been seeing a wonderful man for going on two months, and I’m pretty crazy about him. My biggest hesitancy with introducing him to more of my friends and eventually Mother (yikes!) is some grooming choices. Namely, he needs to trim his eyebrows and his nose hairs. He has a beautiful beard, which is why I assume he hasn’t noticed the need for a trim elsewhere on his face. I’ve stayed silent, not wanting to come across as controlling, but it’s bothering me. I keep thinking about the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, with his out-of-control eyebrows, which the world wanted to attack with shears but which his wife described as adorable. Is there a proper way to ask him to trim? Should I surprise him with a spa day and have the aesthetician break the news of the need for a trim? Should I stay silent?
Dear Beloved:
Etiquetteer wants to say this as nicely as possible, but you do your friends and your mother a disservice when you think that their most enduring first impression of someone you describe as “a wonderful man” will be the condition of his nose and eyebrows. After all, if you’re still Mad About the Boy two months later, you see more of than those things, too, and did so begin with. So will they. Perhaps if your relationship goes so far that jewelry is exchanged you might mention something. Otherwise, keep mum.
The appearance of some men is defined by their bushy eyebrows — your Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, Rasputin, and Albert Einstein — but they are in the minority. In general eyebrows should be trimmed whenever one visits the barber. Nose hair should never protrude outside the nostril, and should be trimmed with tweezers or those tiny scissors. Etiquetteer remembers hearing about those who burnt the hairs out of their nose with a match. Proceed at your peril, but don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses, regardless.
Your suggestion to let a professional solve the problem at a spa day is the perfect solution (for those who can afford it) as it allows a neutral third party to suggest a grooming plan for the future. And it turns out that is exactly what happened to Charlotte Vale in Olive Higgins Prouty’s novel Now, Voyager.* Charlotte’s makeover at a New York beauty parlor shocked even her sister-in-law Lisa, who arranged it. “‘I said nothing about eyebrows, Célestine. You know every well I never allow you to pluck mine. How did you ever come to do such a thing?’ ‘Because they were terra-ble, Madame. Not like yours. Verree thick and strong, like a man’s, and they meet in the middle and make her look always scowling. She say do anything I desire. It was no matter to her. Only in the middle did I pluck much. No one will know I pluck at all. I make her look so beautiful, n’est ce pas?’”** And indeed, she had.
Etiquetteer wishes you joyous introductions.
*Famous now only for the film version starring Bette Davis.
*Now, Voyager, by Olive Higgins Prouty (1941), page 18.