QUESTION: For the past six months, I’ve been going out with a man who seems like a great match for me. We’re both divorced with teenagers and have plenty of shared interests and friends. The sex would be good, too, if he wasn’t so critical about my personal grooming. He is always nagging me to wax, wear make-up or to get my hair done. I’ve always felt you should be happy in your own skin and that it’s a form of weakness to spend your time primping for men. He says that if I really loved him I’d make a bit of effort to look glamorous in the bedroom, but I think he should love me as I am. How can we resolve this?
ANSWER: Being loved for the way you are is an admirable concept, as long as you’re sure who is this unequivocal self. Most of us have a raft of personality traits, some of which are lovable and some of which prove less attractive.
Is it reasonable to demand love however grumpy, selfish, unkind or unkempt you may be on a given occasion? Would you want to leap into bed with your boyfriend if he never shaved, wore a string vest, didn’t shower and gave up his job to sponge off you?
Most of our love is conditional, even if we can’t admit that to ourselves. The big question is: are the conditions we set upon love reasonable? You clearly think your partner is being unreasonable in asking you to groom more assiduously, but for others a request to spruce up wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker.
Your problem reminds me of a dispute the feminist Germaine Greer and writer Julie Burchill once had on Radio 4.
Greer said that women should not have to shave their legs to conform to conventional notions of beauty. Burchill contended that since it took only a couple of minutes with a razor to whip off the hair, why make a big deal about it?
I found myself agreeing with both of them, just as I have sympathy with you and your partner’s opinions.
Clearly, in an ideal world, your boyfriend would find you ravishing, however untended your appearance.
But this is the real world, where people aren’t saints and have predilections that are hard to override. Perhaps his mother glammed up for his father, and so this kind of groomed appearance became his ideal of feminine beauty.
On the other hand, maybe your boyfriend is one of those grim, fussy men who thinks women should be too refined to go to the loo - let alone perspire - and who faints at the sight of bodily fluids.
Almost every female friend I know has been to bed with someone like that. One tells how she was ordered by a neurotic beau to shower before and after sex. Suffice to say, the relationship lasted just a fortnight.
Another found her boyfriend always seemed to lose his mojo when she undressed.
“What is it?” she asked, running through a list of possible complaints: my breath, my armpits, the hair on my legs? At the mention of hair, he went pale. Her womanly down was repulsing him, while his antipathy to it repulsed her.
Interestingly, in a later relationship, that same woman took to monthly waxing sessions like a duck to water, because this second boyfriend (now husband) expressed his desires as a preference rather than an absolute.
Even celebrities don’t escape the curse of the fastidious boyfriend.
Sondra Locke, Clint Eastwood’s one-time partner, told how he always asked her to floss before coming to bed, which one imagines killed all spontaneity stone dead.
Only you can judge if your partner is truly behaving like a man who doesn’t want a woman so much as a manicured mannequin.
If, on the other hand, he just happens to fancy you rotten when you brush your hair, wear lipstick and depilate a little, then I don’t think he’s visiting a misogynistic outrage upon you.
I once had a boyfriend who was the very model of a sensitive new man, but he happened to have a thing for suspenders. I didn’t see the harm in obliging him.
Sex is about mutual generosity and indulging one another’s preferences and fantasies. It’s only polite to make an effort with your appearance for your beloved.
I can’t believe you would like this man in other ways and describe him as a good match if he were generally critical. So I suspect this is more the case of coming to a compromise in the bedroom.
It’s ridiculous for either of you to take up entrenched positions if you’ve got a good thing going.
You need to tell your partner it’s important for you to feel he loves you au naturel. If he can give you that reassurance, surely you can dress up for him once a week?
Is it really a massive compromise of your feminist principles to shave and wear some lipstick every now and then? If the answer to that question is “Yes”, then this man is truly not the one for you. - Daily Mail