Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1,081, Personal Grooming.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1,081.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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Isn't that great?
This episode is a dialogue between Giorgio and Anna.
Giorgio and Anna are talking about personal grooming things you do to keep yourself clean and good looking.
Let's get started.
I'll pick you up tonight at 7 o'clock, okay?
You'd better make it eight o'clock.
I need time to get ready.
You just need to go home, take a shower, and throw on some clothes.
How much time do you need?
Depilate?
What's that?
That's shaving and waxing to you.
I have to shave and wax my legs, my armpits, and bikini area.
Whoa, that's way too much information.
I didn't need to know that.
After that, I'll need my nail clippers, nail file and tweezers to do my nails and my plucking.
I don't even want to know what you pluck.
Just my eyebrows and my... Stop!
I don't need to know the ins and outs of your personal grooming.
Is all that really necessary?
I was until I heard all that.
I don't know if I want my brother dating a woman who's so high-maintenance.
High-maintenance?
High maintenance?
Who are you calling high maintenance?
And high strung.
Georgio begins our dialogue by asking Anna, I'll pick you up tonight at 7, okay?
To pick someone up means usually to drive to their house and to take them somewhere in a car.
Anna says you'd better make it eight.
I need time to get ready.
Giorgio says you just need to go home, take a shower, and throw on some clothes.
Giorgio says that it shouldn't take Anna long to get ready to go.
She just needs to take a shower, to wash herself, and to throw on or put on some clothes.
Throw on is a phrasal verb used informally, the same way we would use the phrasal verb to put on when we're referring to clothes.
Giorgio says, how much time do you need?
Ana says, you have no idea what a woman has to do to look her best, do you?
I don't either.
Ana says, not only do I have to bathe, I need to exfoliate and depolate.
Anna is complaining that Giorgio, being a man, doesn't understand all the things that a woman has to do.
And quite honestly, I as a man don't understand them either.
But I'll try to explain as best I can.
Anna starts by talking about bathing, and that's the one thing I do understand.
To bathe, B-A-T-H-E, means to wash yourself, either in a shower or in a bathtub.
Exfoliate E-X-F-O-L-I-A-T-E means to remove the dead skin cells from the surface of your skin, usually by rubbing your skin with either a rough, tough substance or using some sort of chemical.
This is something I've never done and I've don't know how it's done, but I am told by women, including my wife, that it is in fact done.
Something else women apparently do is depilate.
Now, I'm so unfamiliar with this concept that I actually had to look up the pronunciation of that word.
Absolutely true.
Anyway, depilate, D-E-P-I-L-A-T-E, is when you remove hair from your body.
Now I understand why I didn't know the meaning of it.
And neither does Giorgio, because he says depilate, what's that?
Exactly, right, Giorgio?
Anna says that's shaving and waxing to you.
To shave, S-H-A-V-E, is something I do understand because men, many men shave their faces.
I shave my face every couple of days when I'm not feeling too lazy.
Waxing W-A-X-I-N-G is removing hairs from your body by putting a hot, sticky substance called wax in.
Wax is what we usually make candles out of.
It sounds very painful.
I'm told it is very painful and it's not something that most men would probably do, but apparently some women do this.
She says, I have to shave and wax my legs, my armpits, and bikini area.
Well, I understand shaving and waxing your legs, but apparently Anna also has to do that to her armpits.
Your armpits A-R-M-P-I-T-S are the areas below your shoulder, between where your arms come into your body and the main part of your body, the torso or center part of your body.
Most people have hair... under their arms, in their armpits.
I know I do.
But Anna is going to remove that hair, which is again something apparently women do.
Anna also needs to do something with the bikini area.
A bikini, B-I-K-I-N-I, is a kind of swimsuit that is in two pieces that a woman wears.
One piece covers the top, her breasts.
The other piece covers the bottom, the things that you don't want other people to see, let's say.
So Giorgio says, whoa, that's way too much information.
Too much information means you're telling someone else things that are too personal, that they don't need to know.
We abbreviate this now in English TMI.
If someone is giving you information about their personal life that you don't want to know or don't think you should know, you might say TMI, especially if it's something that is embarrassing to either you or to the person.
Giorgio, in fact, says, I didn't need to know that.
But Anna continues.
She says Your nails are the parts of your hand and foot that are on the very ends of your fingers and your toes, the hard substances that grow out of the ends of your fingers and toes.
Those are your nails, N-A-I-L-S.
So a nail clipper would be something that cuts your nail.
The verb to clip, C-L-I-P, means to cut.
A nail file.
F-I-L-E is a small tool, usually a flat little stick, that is rubbed against the nails in order to make them smooth.
After you cut them, I guess.
Tweezers T-W-E-E-Z-E-R-S are small instruments that look like little pliers or Like scissors sort of, but they don't cut things.
They are used to grab onto something that's very small and remove it.
If, for example, you pick up a piece of wood and the wood is rough, you might get a little piece of the wood in the skin of your finger.
To remove that little piece of wood, what we would call a sliver S-L-I-V-E-R, you would use a very small tool called a tweezers.
Well, that's what Anna is using.
Now, why is she using a tweezers?
Well, apparently, in order to do her plucking.
P-L-U-C-K-I-N-G.
Plucking comes from the verb to pluck P-L-U-C-K, which means to pull out hair from your body, usually using a tweezers.
Once again, it sounds rather painful.
Giorgio, upon hearing this, says what I think most men would say I don't even want to know what you pluck, what kind of hairs you're pulling out.
But Anna tells him just my eyebrows, and my eyebrows E-Y-E-B-R-O-W-S are the thin rows of hair that grow above your eyes.
Women sometimes pluck the hairs out of their eyebrows, I'm told, in order to make them look better.
This is not something that most men do.
I certainly would not do that.
I cut my eyebrows sometimes, but I don't pluck them.
Once again, I'm not used to that kind of pain the way women are, I guess.
Giorgio doesn't want to know what other hairs Anna plucks.
He tells her, stop.
I don't need to know the ins and outs of your personal grooming.
The expression the ins I-N-S and outs O-U-T-S refers to the detailed information about something, the specific information about something.
In this case, it's the ins and outs of personal grooming.
Grooming G-R-O-O-M-I-N-G comes from the verb to groom, which means to take care of something in terms of the physical cleansiness and appearance of it.
So personal grooming would be taking care of yourself, washing yourself, cutting your hair, shaving and so forth.
All the crazy things that women do.
Anna says...
You are going to introduce me to your brother, aren't you?
Your very handsome brother?
Anna is explaining why she needs to do all of this personal grooming.
It is apparently because Giorgio is going to introduce her to Giorgio's brother.
To introduce someone to someone else means to take someone and have them meet someone that you know.
So if you have a new girlfriend and you decide to introduce your girlfriend to your parents, you take your girlfriend home with you and you let your parents meet your girlfriend.
That's usually considered somewhat of a serious step in a relationship when you meet the parents, when you meet the parents of your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
Well, Giorgio has a brother who Anna thinks is very handsome, very good looking.
Giorgio says, I was, meaning I was going to introduce you to my brother until I heard all that.
Meaning until I heard about all the things that you do in doing your personal grooming.
Giorgio says I don't know if I want my brother dating, going out romantically with a woman who's so high maintenance.
The expression high maintenance M-A-I-N-T-E-N-A-N-C-E is used to describe something that requires a lot of work.
It's often used in a negative way to describe a woman who is very demanding, who requires a lot of attention.
I'm not sure if that's what Giorgio is referring to here.
He does think that Anna takes an awful long time in order to get ready, and perhaps that's why he thinks she's high-maintenance.
Anna considers this an insult, a negative thing to say about her.
She says, high maintenance.
High maintenance?
Who are you calling high maintenance?
She's very upset.
Giorgio, however, doesn't apologize.
Instead, he says, insultingly, and high strung.
Someone who's high-strung S-T-R-U-N-G is, someone who's easily upset, someone who gets mad at the smallest little thing, or someone who's just very nervous and very tense T-E-N-S-E.
Someone who's always very worried, perhaps.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
You just need to go home, take a shower, and throw on some clothes.
How much time do you need?
You have no idea what a woman has to do to look her best, do you?
Not only do I have to bathe, I need to exfoliate and depilate.
Depilate?
What's that?
That's shaving and waxing to you.
I have to shave and wax my legs, my armpits, and bikini area.
Whoa, that's way too much information.
I didn't need to know that.
After that, I'll need my nail clippers, nail file, and tweezers to do my nails and my plucking.
I don't even want to know what you pluck.
Just my eyebrows and my... Stop.
I don't need to know the ins and outs of your personal grooming.
Is all that really necessary?
You are going to introduce me to your brother, aren't you?
Your very handsome brother?
I was, until I heard all that.
I don't know if I want my brother dating a woman who's so high maintenance.
High maintenance?
High maintenance?
Who are you calling high maintenance?
And high strung.
Our script writer understands all the ins and outs of the English language.
I speak, of course, of the wonderful, not high-maintenance, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
