Shaving Down SouthAlso, a response to the question about why Uzbek men shaved down below, I never really quite understood this and just accepted the fact.
Uzbekistan consistently remained to me a fascinating place becuase I never always discovered truly satisfactory answers to the questions I brought up. People were a little elusive in that way and I had to take whatever insight was offerred with a grain of skepticism.
I wondered it if was perhaps from the Muslim traditions of the Uzbeks. I remember reading in 2001 that the terrorists on the flights that hit the World Trade Center had prepared to meet Allah upon their death, and in doing so, had prepared their bodies by shaving them. This may have been an aspect, but Uzbeks were so nominal in their observance of Islam. They drank vodka. They used prostitutes. It didn't seem to be Islamic tradition that explained this phenomenon -- no one had answered my questions indicating such, as most of the people I knew and talked to were particularly observant, save a few. The answers they gave were either about the heat, about how it made the penis look bigger, or other aesthetic purposes...But the most interesting of them all was from a straight and shaven male Uzbek friend who spoke rather good English, who told me that it was more hygenic this way, and that little goblins lived in the public hairs.
Goblins... is that how they refer to crabs?