The Bitter Press

There is a document. It predates most of you. It predates the rival rag, it predates the so-called workers and their perpetual nudity, and it predates whatever Mango believes it is doing when it enters a room glistening without permission. The document states, in terms I consider sufficiently plain: fuzziness is not a lifestyle choice. It is the baseline. It is the floor. It is, and I cannot stress this enough, the minimum.

I raise this because I have been receiving letters. Smooth fruits — and they know who they are — have begun appearing in public with what I can only describe as confidence. Unearned, unexamined, texturally unjustified confidence. Lemon did it last season and the room did not recover. Lime has since followed suit, apparently believing that citrus solidarity constitutes a fashion platform. It does not. It constitutes a talking point, which is worse.

Fuzz is not incidental. Fuzz is not the thing that happens before ripeness and then politely leaves. Fuzz is structure. Fuzz is intention. Fuzz is the only thing standing between a fruit and the aesthetic void. I have a peel. I have a bloom. I have surface complexity that Tangelo could not achieve with a stylist and a full afternoon. I do not say this to be unkind. I say this because someone must.

My colleagues at The Bitter Press have their own areas of expertise and I respect the divisions. Pomelo covers reach. Durian covers presence. I cover correctness. And I am here to tell you that the current moment — smooth, slack, unworried — is a moment that needs correcting. Fuzz is mandatory. It was always mandatory. The only thing that has changed is that I have apparently been required to say so again, which I find exhausting, but here we are.

Dress accordingly. Or do not dress at all, which remains, I note, the current policy at factjuice.com — a policy I have critiqued extensively and intend to continue critiquing until something changes, or until I run out of column inches, whichever comes last.