We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

oIt is an incontrovertible truth that the female of the species has a much easier time of it than the male.

Seahorse males do all the tending and nurturing, Stags are saddled with all that ridiculous rutting and the poor Lion has to lie in the baking heat of the Sun whilst the ladies are having all the fun of the hunt. Like I say, incontrovertible.

Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, brings this inequality to sharper relief than the first-thing-in-the-morning-before-the-brain-has-had-a-chance-to-reboot ritual that is ...shaving.

The female of the species can choose to slap on some make-up (the matter of a few moments of mirror-time) or she can venture forth, confident that her natural beauty will open doors, vacate seats and get her food and drink aplenty.

The man, however, has (even before his neurones have had a chance to properly file the extraordinary heroics of his just-ended dreams) the awful dilemma to face of whether or not to remove the evolutionarily redundant growth that has sprouted overnight from every single pore of his face.

Those bristling protuberances, that the shaving mirror magnifies into a Post-asteroid-Siberian-forest-scape-of-desolation, can either stay...or they have to go.

Ah, were that it was that simple!

One step beyond the drawbridge and he-who-wears-the-mark-of-just-a-single-night's-growth is cast down into the sub-leper hell of unshaveness (Ignore the spell-checker, it's a word, I've been there).

Clean-shaven is cool, 'designer-stubble' (depending upon whereabouts in the fashion-cycle we currently are) might also meet with approval and a 'full' beard at least symbolises a long-term commitment on the bearer's part. Woe-betide he-who-faces-the-World with the 'too-lazy-to-shave' look.

Hence, the male is forced to adopt the reluctant ritual of face-scraping, a ritual imbued with manifold decisions (wet/dry, full-set/tash-only, narrow/wide,etc,etc,etc) and devices, the complexity of which makes it a miracle that we men manage to complete the task before we fall asleep and the folly of follicular facial growth greets us at the break of another day.

All this, and they expect us to spend the day remembering to lower the seat afterwards, TOO?