When I was a girl growing up in the liberated seventies after the radical sixties, we were told that true freedom and equality consisted of two things: 1) letting it all hang out or down, as the case may be, after burning your bra and 2) going natural after losing your safety razor.

After all, men didn’t have to wear restrictive, tight whalebone corset stays . . . er . . . um . . . I mean they didn’t have to wear over the shoulder boulder holders, and men got to have hairy wildebeests legs, so women should get to have hairy wildebeest legs too.

We called it liberation. Mostly it was just droopy and hairy.

Still . . . it was kind of interesting to think that women might be more than the sum of their . . . er . . . um . . . parts, even if they had to be hairy to do it. It was interesting.

For a day or two.

Now it’s bizarre uses for hot wax.

Please be advised that the names have been changed to protect my daughters who are going on a cruise and feel the need to render their bodies as hairless as newborn baby rats.

“But why?”

“Because everyone is doing it,” said one unnamed daughter, arguing the pro side of achieving a perfect state of hairlessness.

“Always a great reason to do anything,” I countered.

She then demonstrated the proper position to assume when having hot wax poured over your . . . er . . . um . . . less than hairless bits, followed by her pantomiming a violent ripping motion. She then acted out the resulting screaming, the convulsing of the legs, the crossing of the eyes, and the subsequent passing out.

My other nameless daughter sighed and said, “I didn’t use the liquid hot wax. I tried those wax strippy ripper things.”

“Have you lost your . . .”

She cut me off, frowning.

“They didn’t work very well. I now look like a well-loved teddy bear. You know, a stuffed animal that looks a little moth eaten in spots.”

“Good grief. You turned yourself into the velveteen rabbit before it winds up on the rubbish heap,” I said with a hand on my . . . er . . . um . . . heart.

“Pretty much.”

“Seriously, I have no sympathy for this nonsense. Apparently, you young people are gorillas. Not me. I’m quite pretty.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating our less than hairless bits.

I sighed.

“What happened to the bra burning, boob drooping, hairy legged, proud momma, caftan wearing women of my youth?”

“They got a special deal on a Caribbean cruise.”

Right. That’ll do it.