There are 2 obasans that go practically everyday to our local swimming pool and lately they have been complaining to the administration about allowing entrance to men with facial hairs. They want the men to shave the hair or else to go swim somewhere else. I don’t have beard or goatee but I have enough body hair to become the next victim of prejudice. The young peoples don’t care but some old ladies think that beards and goatees can make the pool dirty.
I used to get a laugh watching a German guy go swimming at one of the pools here. He had the most body hair I’ve ever seen on a grown human male but was bald as a cue ball. They made him wear a swimming cap.
But have the obasans also shaved? Insist that they shave down (completely) before you’ll consent to letting them share the pool with you. Ask them to strip, just to make sure.
Is it worth seeing that to make your point?
Well quite. What has been seen cannot be unseen. But I think the principle is sound. The general rule in Taiwan seems to be that if someone complains about something, you should complain louder. Preferably about something with no logical connection to the topic in hand. In this case, you might make a fuss about these obasans not wearing caps (do they?), or perhaps didn’t shower before entering the pool. There’s a dirty bugger sometimes turns up at our community hot spring with a washcloth and starts scrubbing himself, and another woman who turns up with a loofah and does the same. Some grumpy old git excoriated me for putting my shoes in the clothes locker, and then proceeded to jump in the spring without so much as wiping his feet (you’re supposed to shower first, Japanese-style, according to the rules on the door). Old people in general have a slightly odd grasp of hygiene.
This. If the OP is requested to be clean shaven to enter the pool, same goes for these busybody obasans.
I haven’t been swimming in a public pool in Taiwan since growing a full beard. I don’t know what they’d want me to do. I shave my head so wearing a swim cap seems rather pointless when my beard is shaggy and homeless guy length.
I just hope that the old ladies will leave my body hair alone. Telling men to do a body wax is sort of men abuse. But they are old, if I tell the old ladies to do a Brazilian down there they will more likely beat me for being disrespectul to an elderly person. They will probably tell me that their advice is a word of wisdom gained from them being old and I need to cherish and do it. But those young men with beards in my local pool will most likely go and find somewhere else to swim instead of arguing with old ladies because the public will side with the poor and fragile ladies.