Cardinal Wolsey – I need your insight – The Tudors on showcase

Posted on | October 16, 2007 | 11 Comments

I haven’t watched this new show, though it is hard to miss the ads for it. Huge posters pepper the streetcars and subway stations here in Toronto. It’s a Showcase tv miniseries about the life of young Henry VIII.

There is something unsettling about the posters. The title character – Henry of course – has been groomed and plucked until there isn’t a hair on his body. No chest hairs, no arm hairs – yuck! He is the quintessential metro sexual male. All smooth baby soft surfaces and not a hair out of place.

Now my question, perhaps best answered by Cardinal Wolsey himself, is this:

Did Henry suffer from such a bad fashion? Did he have every hair on his body plucked off?

He looks terribly downtown in the photos. Have the series producers done another disservice to history and remade our hero with 21st century morals and styles? I was under the impression King Henry was the picture of viral manhood.  I can’t remember ever reading his court was obsessed with body hair – body lice perhaps, but not body hair.

Am I wrong? Anyone?

I personally find this fashion obsession with shaving every inch of the body a bit overwhelming and quite frankly creepy.  It makes the man a bit androgynous.

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Category: History, TV

Comments

11 Responses to “Cardinal Wolsey – I need your insight – The Tudors on showcase”

  1. bimmy the bookish
    October 16th, 2007 @ 5:34 pm

    OOO, well that’s interesting, because The Tudors are adorning our screens here in the UK too.
    The BBC do not miss any opportunity AT ALL to run a trailer full of bodice ripping and tantrums, and so much so that we can’t help but wonder whether the current spate of historical epics is a way of getting soft porn on mainstream tv :)
    I HAD noticed the smooth hairless bod of Young Henry – (hard not to really, given the amount of time he spends with his shirt off) which just looks SO un-natural.
    (Was it too historically geeky of me to feel cross that neither he nor his famously auburn haired daughter were portrayed with auburn hair?)
    Anyway to return to the point,
    why has it become so trendy to be so smooth?? Hairy men are great! Let’s hear it for hairy bears!

  2. bimmy the bookish
    October 16th, 2007 @ 5:35 pm

    PS: CARDINAL WOLSELYis alive, well and BLOGGING????

  3. catpaw
    October 16th, 2007 @ 10:07 pm

    I don’t think you are out of order for being a bit peevish at the lack of auburn hair – I get very annoyed with this lack of attention to detail.

    The hairless look and the bodice ripping are another point of annoyance.

  4. bimmy the bookish
    October 17th, 2007 @ 5:50 pm

    Well, perhaps i exaggerated slightly on the bodice ripping – it’s more the ase that a small ribbon is pulled, and the whole dress falls off.
    must have been jolly tricky in Tudor times to keep your clothes on, judging by the trouble they have.
    But yes, I’m still watching it! I like hysterical dramas.
    Maybe you feel so strongly about the hairless thing on account of your extreme furriness?

  5. Cardinal Wolsey
    October 17th, 2007 @ 5:53 pm

    The whole show is a bit mad. All the throwing furniture around and wrestling 1:1 with the King of France. It’s like “we’ve got to make this interesting and had better keep the action going”. “Rome” was better, but then HBO are a better outfit than Showtime?.

  6. catpaw
    October 17th, 2007 @ 6:32 pm

    I wondered about that… you being a Tudor man would be the one to ask.

  7. catpaw
    October 17th, 2007 @ 6:35 pm

    “Maybe you feel so strongly about the hairless thing on account of your extreme furriness?”

    Well, I am rather proud of my lush tabby coat.

  8. Buffy
    October 17th, 2007 @ 10:24 pm

    Do you think that body hair adds to a males masculinity? I must say…I’d take a hairless male over a hairy bear (sorry bimmy the bookish ) but I don’t deal with ‘fur’ balls ;)

  9. catpaw
    October 18th, 2007 @ 1:14 am

    I object to the hairlessness because it makes men look like hairless babes – jailbait material.

  10. bimmy the bookish
    October 18th, 2007 @ 5:57 pm

    OOOO Buffy, that’s furry nuff.
    I’m quite hapy for other people to prefer the less hairy chaps, it’s just that I do have a penchant for the hairier (??) types myself.
    It’s one thing not be very hairy naturally, and quite another to shave it all off.
    How many Bics must that take? And doesnt it clog up the sink?

  11. Angela
    February 6th, 2009 @ 9:16 am

    I found your site on google and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work.