Allow Me To Digress …
Recent, and unusual, snow storms in England prompted one radio DJ to call the ensuing chaos «Snowmageddon». But the particularly snowy winter here in Berlin is simply the cold season back on form after a mild four year recess. It has forced me to ride the metro to work instead of cycling, which is where I saw these, stuck above opposite doors of the S-Bahn train:
The first ad is for «Permanent Hair Removal», and shows two rubbery post-humans, freed at last from the tyranny of body hair. It suggests a course of lasery IPL-Technology treatment. The second ad asks, «Thin hair? Hair loss? Nothing helps?», and suggests a course of lasery E-Zone-Program treatment.
This article has nothing to do with architecture.
You opened a can of worms here with the lazer stuff. I think its a fascinating thing with hair removal, I remember hearing a report a few years ago on BBC World Service about a new theory concerning why humans are such a relatively hairless race of mammals. A little web ‘research’ using the #1 search engine yielded this report from The Royal Society … purveyors of science to HRH Queen Elizabeth II?:
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?year=&id=1685
… so it all DOES have a connection to the ‘A’ word now, doesn’t it? I mean, can you imagine sleeping outside in a shed in the winter, or in a snow cave or something? Maybe we became builders because of our hairlessness, or the other way around. There is an interdependence whichever case it may be.
What I find so interesting about the ever-continuing trend towards hairlessness within our species is that its something we’re now effectively accelerating through the treatments we do to ourselves. Shaving should be included in that rubric of activities as hair removal in the crotch region only became viable using this method once the safety razor was invented, I would assume. And that just wasn’t too long ago, I reckon in the 30’s or 40’s maybe.
OK, using laser beams pushes it up a notch but its a seemingly inevitable trajectory of our species to become hair-free. The the theory outlined in the Royal Society article gives some explanation as to why this has already been going on as a course of nature (that is, assuming we’re not aliens in the first place). And it has to do with sex. Its like people are lazer-treating themselves into the future condition of our species. And there WILL be architectural ramifications.
As someone more bluntly put it on a German internet forum concerning this topic: «Rasiert ist hygenischer und auch wesentlich geiler! so leckt bzw. bläst es sich besser!» («shaved is more hygenic and also markedly sexier! its better to blow and suck it that way!») [my rough translation, which is shamefully insufficient in expressing the crassness of how the German tongue {oops!} expresses the mechanics of sex].
Now anal bleaching, that is some post-human shit that I should assume has nothing to do with architecture at all. OK, I can connect it to architecture, but I’ll spare you.
Nice winter shot up at the top, by the way.