When I was blitzed I shaved my legs.

This guy sounds blitzed 24/7

I shaved my legs once when was biking. Wanted to look pro. Way too much work to keep up and looked like hell when it was stubble. I can't even keep my face shaved.

Was that letter sent via Telegram?

YOU SHOULD HAVE SHOUTED BACK TO HIM, DAN.

Poll:

Fake or Foreigner?

There are plenty of women - effectively an infinite number, that like shaved legs. The only problem (for most of us) is that there are 2x or 3x more who would immediately cross someone (you) off the list for having shaved legs.

Hate to tell you, but everyone wrote you off when you started wearing sandals everywhere. No further comments on your decisions are necessary.

@5: Fetishist?

Dear god, Dan, what you have to put up with.
@7: Depends. If the sandals were worn with socks, yeah, for sure. If not, the sandals aren't as bad as the shouting.

Urgutha, I'm going to have to go with fake. Many foreigners use much better grammar than native English speakers because they actually studied the language. That was a tortuous read, and not just because of the caps locks and ellipses. I can't wait to read Ms. Fichu and Mr. Venn's assessments!

@9 They have their place, but this one's all-sandals-all-the-time. Sandals at the strip club screams, probably in all caps, "no further input from society will be considered."

I'd like to congratulate the LW on figuring out a way to send a telegram in this day and age.

UF @5, Undead @8: Not necessarily fake, foreign, or fetishist. LW says he only reads Dan "occasionally" and he may not be a regular online poster who would understand that all-caps on the Interwebs is equivalent to SHOUTING and therefore rather rude. I know plenty of native English speakers who routinely misuse their/there/they're, along with to/too/two. And how is a man shaving his legs a fetish, any more than a woman not shaving hers? If I were attracted to a person of either gender, I can't imagine leg hair playing any role whatsoever in increasing or decreasing their attractiveness. That appears to be the major point that LW is trying to make, although admittedly he is not the world's best wordsmith. The women he encounters (whom he, as a super-straight guy, is presumably eager to impress) are not put off by the fact that he likes to ramble around showing off his shaved legs. I'm not a fashionista so I'm not qualified to weigh in on the sandals-at-strip-clubs issue raised by Doug @11, but as far as I'm concerned, a man with shaved legs is not very high on the list of problematic issues we have to worry about in this country.

I bet it's real. Plenty of people write like that, especially those ellipses. I like a bit of chest, arm and leg hair on men. I wouldn't kick either of those divers out of my bed though. I think Dan selected this letter just to have an excuse to play the clip. And thank you.

What a fascinating letter.

Agree EmmaLiz, it's a great clip. Diving is the best to watch and these two are very cute.

Why is it always those extremely-straight-guys-forever who do such gay things?

@ 12 - One of my neighbours received a telegram last week. They still exist!

My guess is a ten year-old boy who has discovered the joy of anonymous postings on the Web. Hey, Beaver Cleaver, here's hoping you pay a little closer attention in English class. And a course in creative writing down the road wouldn't hurt, either. You show a lack of imagination. You could have written a letter about fucking a tiger, like I did when I was your age. Shave your legs, shave your ass, shave your head. Nobody gives a shit.

@14 Your point is well taken! Beautiful diver lads in slo-mo over and over. Mmmmm.

DK @19

shave your ass,

Not a good idea to use a sharp blade on that part of your body. If you want to have a hairless ass, have it waxed.

@17: Overly restrictive/reductive concept of masculinity?

@14, I would agree that Dan has carte blanche to post hot diving vids, under any pretext. Didn't watch the Olympics, but these guys are really good as well as hot and nearly naked. Yeah!

I think shaved legs are pretty sexy if a guy feels like doing that. Think it's a bit wanky to rule someone out as potential sexy interest because of that. Open your minds, peeps. Not all shaved guys are shouty loons - my DH does sometimes and it's all good.

I'm an editor on a website that uses user-submitted content.

This is not fake. It looks like about 25% of our submissions.

And it's not foreign. On the whole, submissions from people who do not have English as their first language are on par with those of native English speakers. You get a little unusual verb usage, and that's about it.

@23: DH? Is this Savage Love or a mommy blog? ;)

@24: Thank you. Why would anyone think that atrocious user of ellipses and grammar and caps lock is "fake"? It's actually quite common.

@ 22 - Sarcasm.

I always find it funny when straight guys feel the need to assert that they really are straight even though they did X, when X is rather innocuous. As if shaving one's leg (to give this particular example) was something that obviously affects one's sexual orientation. It's their overly restrictive/reductive concept of masculinity I wished to highlight here.

95% narcissist, 5% fetishist. I know (from personal ... uh ... misery) that straight men can be huge narcissists. As for this guy, he also craves constant attention, so he won't even allow himself to mar that long plane of smooth skin with socks and shoes.

Hehe. I like hair on men honestly, but to each his (or her) own.

Go you letter writer. Get on with your bad self.

@26: I know, I know.

@25: I've always wondered where DH gained such traction, I assume it's been around long before mommyblogs, but was it mostly used in lovey-divey personal letter-writing? Letters to advice columns? It's such an affected phase that I'd think that it has to have had some history independent of vocal communication.

@27: Yeah. Grooming and enjoying the process or end result is one thing, but he seems to enjoy talking about his process more than the end result or the process itself.

I'm a bit of a hypocrite, probably. I like the look and feel of a smooth guy, smooth chest especially, but smooth legs are nice too. On the other hand, I'm far, far too lazy to shave my own chest or legs. I'm with @2. Way too much work. I grudgingly shave my face only because facial hair looks terrible on me. I can imagine few more unpleasant tasks than regularly shaving my legs.

But hey, if you actually like shaving your legs, go for it! You be you! People do far weirder shit to themselves to effect how they look.

RE ellipses:

I just wanted to comment that there's a valued regular contributor to these threads whose comments used to be about half ellipse. They were jeered at, but persisted. As they gained experience their comments took on standard form, appeared much more thought-through and they gained a following.

I have great admiration for this person but I won't name them because I don't wish to appear condescending.

Writing is hard. It doesn't come automatically. It takes practice.

My issue with this letter isn't the ellipses, but a combination of the shouting--um, I mean THE SHOUTING--and the information that no one needed: that straight men who shave their legs can have beautiful smooth skin and want to show it off and still--shockingly--they are straight.

@33: Oh Alison now I'm wracking my brain wondering who it could be that you're referring to.

@33 and more regarding ellipses...

Among certain demographics and in certain type of writing, they take the place of periods. This annoys me, but it's a thing that is happening. I've found it much more among very young people, but also (surprisingly) among Indians- actually in India, not in the US- and not just young ones. My aunties and uncles all write like this... I never understood why... My best bet... is that it prevents you from the necessities of composing a sentence... since you can just put your thoughts out there as they come to you... My entire facebook feed is like this... I also get the feeling that they think it reads more seriously... like if you have a deep thought... you are trying to make people feel the pause... it really makes you think...

I don't know if other non-native speakers do this, and Indians who speak English have usually done so since birth or very early childhood anyway.

I also wonder if it has to do with technology skipping generations in developing countries. In many parts of the world, people who had no tech at all 20 and 30 years ago skipped steps of cable and landlines and home computers and went straight to smart phones and laptops. So the way they learn to communicate in writing is slightly different than the pattern you find in the West since they probably did their first typing ever in text form on a phone. That's a context where things like cap-locks or punctuation are not an issue. I almost said this earlier when someone asked about non-native speakers. I find that I tend to make mistakes in sentence structure or in phrasing, even after all these years, but that is an entirely different set of skills than formatting. This could be a result of adopting tech at a different time in one's life/learning.

If my theory is true, then it also explains why the younger generation of Westerners are also more likely to make those mistakes (caps, text speak, improper punctuation) since they learned to read, write and text/type basically at the same time. Texting and casually talking online is not something they have added to their communication skills- it is what they have always done. Learning how to separate them out (various registers so to speak) is a process.

Wait, you mean you even wear shorts and sandals to the doctor's office???!!! You are a WILD MAN!!!

Sandals are good. No problem with sandals,I wear them all thru our hot summers.
Body hair. I was watching a clip for one of our shows here in Oz. Can't remember the name, a gay young comedian's show. And omg, one of the women in it had underarm hair. Yes.

@39 one of the women in it had underarm hair.

WHAT!!? That is outrageous!

At last Donny. My mob finally represented on TV.

I hate shaving my legs. (Female) I only do it when it gets itchy under my socks. Shave, don't shave... It really shouldn't matter.

I thought this was an ironic letter. That the LW was pointing out that if this was a woman and reversed - i.e., she chose not to shave her legs - then this wouldn't even really be a letter. Effectively illustrating the sexist notions about how women should appear in public.

@36 EmmaLiz I think one of the perceived benefits of ellipses is they make what you write look less definitive...a bit like ending sentences with a question mark?

@39: Please Like Me? I've seen a few eps.

@43: Writing it like an all-caps email forward from your older relatives would seem like a sure distraction from that point. Why so much discussion about "his" straightness if that was the point?

Yes undead, that's the name of it.
Have you heard the new Nick Cave album yet. A documentary was on at the cinemas for a few days, but my son didn't get to it. He's got the new album, not sure how he feels about it.

@47: We saw the doc based on Skeleton Tree (Once More, With Feeling) in theaters, my spouse sobbed... wow was it bleak. Whereas 20000 days on earth was about the creative spirit and process, this was laid bare and covers the death of creativity after trauma. The 3D wasn't as tacky as expected, though it was still a bit migraine-inducing.

The album itself is great, really enjoying it though hard to shake little things here and there about it, even though the songwriting happened before his tragedy occurred.

Seeing an attractive woman in sexy sandals gives me sandalwood.