Hair today, gone tomorrow

I recently wrote about Andrew Sullivan's all-out campaign to preserve the traditional, manly, institution that is... back hair. Turns out Sullivan's not the only right-leaning blogger put off by the waxed human form. Ross Douthat is "nostalgic for the Hippies," harkening back to a time when women left everything down there as is, when "Brazilian" was a nationality, not a bikini wax, when....right.

The conservative defense of untouched body hair makes perfect sense. Because when you think about it, increased hairlessness is the ultimate symbol for human progress. Not just in a Darwinian sense--both evolution and trends in waxing have brought us as a society to this near-hairless point. Revolutions topple massive, stale, powdered wigs. The undefinable-but-so-much-better past conservatives so frequently invoke (parodied here) was a simpler time, a more innocent time, and, gosh darn it, a hairier time.