Facials - Not The Spa Kind

Last night at Puck's birthday gathering, one of the dinner-table discussions was whether it's inherently demeaning to have a guy come on your face. (I love the conversations I can have with my friends. I really do.)

My feeling is that it's not - unless it's a scene and you both want it to be, and that's hot to you. And I was interested to find that the three other women and two men present agreed with me.

"So you take the Eleanor Roosevelt point of view - that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent?" I asked the woman sitting next to me.

"Yeah. If I was with some guy and he tried to make me feel all demeaned by coming on my face, I'd be like: whatever with you, phhffft!" She turned her head, lifting one shoulder in a very feminine gesture of dismissal. "I wouldn't feel bad, it would just be stupid of him."

Across the table, her partner - who has a gift for rapier-like ripostes - tapped his finger on his chin thoughtfully and remarked, "You know what you should say if a guy tries to do that? Be demeaning by coming on you, I mean."

What? what? we all asked.

He put on a wide-eyed, innocent expression and spoke in a girlish voice. "Is that - is that it? Oh... Okay, no, it's cool, I just... thought there would be more. Huh... Is it always like that?”

We howled with laughter.

He shrugged. "There's always a way to turn things around."