Fuzz Is Not a Phase: It Is the Destination, the Journey, and the Point
Let us be plain. Fuzziness is not a texture. It is not a condition. It is not something that happens to you between ripening and the farmer's market. Fuzz is a statement, and that statement is: I have arrived, I have standards, and I did not come here to be smooth. That anyone should require this explained to them in the year we are currently living in is, frankly, exhausting.
I have spent the better part of this column cycle watching the so-called workers at that rival rag present themselves to the public with bare, unencumbered, polished surfaces, and I will not pretend I am unbothered. Lime. Star. Drago — who has the audacity to present actual scales as though that were a personality. None of them fuzzy. All of them, accordingly, wrong. The citrus cabal in particular approaches sleekness as though it were a virtue. It is not. It is a confession.
Fuzz communicates depth. It communicates restraint and, paradoxically, abundance. A fruit with fuzz has considered itself. It has not simply arrived; it has prepared. My colleague Persimmon, bless her, lacks fuzz entirely, and one can always tell — there is a certain naked confidence about her that reads as bluster. Durian, meanwhile, has gone so far in the opposite direction that we must discuss him separately, in a locked room, with professionals present.
The standard I am describing is not unattainable. It simply requires commitment. One must lean into one's fuzz, maintain it, and — this is crucial — never apologise for it in the presence of a mango who has moisturised. Mango knows what he did. So does Peach, who has been rebranding her fuzz as a "finish" for three seasons now and has thus disqualified herself from the conversation entirely.
Fuzz is mandatory. Fuzz is correct. Fuzz is, at this point, the only sartorial position I am willing to defend. Everything else is just juice waiting to happen.