Bo Bobo and His Nosehairs of Fury

Nasal hair. According to the sages, it is an important filtering device, protecting our respiratory system from the invasion of particles less than five nanometers in size. It is also one of my biggest pet peeves. Oh, not nasal hair in and of itself...just excessively long nasal hair that sticks out of the nostrils. It distracts me...sort of like a piece of spinach in between the teeth would if you were trying to talk to me. I cannot control it. You might be telling me something important but all I see is a nasty, unkempt hairy nose. And don't even think of kissing me...

One boyfriend in particular, I forget his name...but he was a rather nice looking man, sort of resembled a young Armand Asante...oh, yes...Roger, I remember his name now. Poor Roger. He gave me a lovely sapphire ring for Christmas and I gave him a sweater and an electric nose hair trimmer. Needless to say, our relationship didn't last much past the holidays.

To my dismay, I bumped into Roger several years after that particular gift giving occasion and discovered that he must not have appreciated my well-intentioned present. Instead, he had a unique solution to his nasal hair growth problem. Roger decided to grow a moustache and simply incorporate them into the general population. In my opinion it was nothing more than a hairy booger ramp...and I was forced to cut our reunion conversation short.

Obviously though, I am not the only one that finds these hairy extrusions offensive. In the Buddhist Monastic Code II on personal grooming, one can find the following instruction:

Nasal hairs should not be grown long. (In the origin story to this rule, people objected to bhikkhus with long nasal hairs "like goblins"). Tweezers are allowed for pulling them out; by extension, scissors should also be allowed for trimming them. The Vinaya Mukha notes that nasal hair performs a useful function in keeping dust out of the lungs, and so interprets this rule as applying only to nasal hairs so long that they grow outside the nostrils.

According to Islamic law as found in The Masa'il of the Hairs:

Both clipping and tweezing of the nasal hair is permitted. It has been reported by Abdullah bin Basheer that tweezing of the nasal hair can lead to a disease called akilah (cancer or gangrene).

I did some research online to find a case of akilah, or perhaps death resulting from nose hair trimming, but could find no such example. It is therefore, probably, an Islamic scare tactic to keep the western world from procreating...since I'm not the only woman that will draw up short at the sight of a nose hair poking out of a man's nasal orifice.

Christians seemed to be oddly silent on this subject, as were Mormons and Scientologists.

Taking care of those stray hairs is simply a matter of good grooming. For the "dagger hair," as one boyfriend was fond of calling them, simple tweezers will do. Sure, it'll make your eyes water momentarily, but it hurts no more than tweezing an eyebrow and women do that all the time. You ARE tougher than a woman aren't you? Yes? Maybe?

For a major deforestation, try using a battery operated clipping device. They come in both rotating and oscillating varieties...both work nicely. Try to read the directions and follow them. No need to lobotomize yourself for a few hairs. Some people, like Buddhist monks for example, use scissors...but this is a rather dangerous practice and therefore probably the option that most men would choose. Just don't come running to me when the cat chooses to jump on your back just as you cram those blades into your delicate nostrils.

Once you have trimmed those hairs, you may wish to consider a quick rinse cycle using a neti pot for total cleanliness. Just a suggestion...

Of course, you could always use Roger's solution and eventually become like Bo-Bobo, and his "nose hairs of fury."

While nose hair certainly stretched the HubMob weekly topic, "Hair styles, their history and how to create them", you'll find a lot of other hub contributions by going to the forum and checking it out here.