Christopher Hitchens has a piece in August's Vanity Fair where he undergoes waterboarding in North Carolina in order to give a firsthand account of the "not torture" torture technique. The story is both chilling and amusing. But it got us thinking: Is Hitchens now VF's official resident torture lab rat? Because certainly his firsthand account of a getting a sunga—a Brazilian bikini wax for men—qualified as the writer being subjected to a distinct form of foul play, didn't it?

Well, we've been known to explore the fine line between beauty treatments and torture before, and we couldn't help but compare Hitchen's vaguely similar accounts of waterboarding and scrotum-waxing:

• "Arms already lost to me, I wasn't able to flail as I was pushed onto a sloping board and positioned with my head lower than my heart. (That's the main point: the angle can be slight or steep.) Then my legs were lashed together so that the board and I were one single and trussed unit."—Hitchens on being waterboarded

• "You have to spread your knees as far apart as they will go, while keeping your feet together. In this "wide stance" position, which is disconcertingly like waiting to have your Pampers changed, you are painted with hot wax, to which strips are successively attached and then torn away."—Hitchens on getting a Brazilian

• "Brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions."—On being waterboarded

• "The combined effect was like being tortured for information that you do not possess, with intervals for a (incidentally very costly) sandpaper handjob."—On getting a Brazilian

• "The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face."—On being waterboarded

• "The thing is that, in order to rip, you have to grip. A point of leverage is required: a place that can be firmly gripped and pulled while the skin is tautened."On getting a Brazilian

• "The team who agreed to give me a hard time in the woods of North Carolina belong to a highly honorable group. This group regards itself as out on the front line in defense of a society that is too spoiled and too ungrateful to appreciate those solid, underpaid volunteers who guard us while we sleep."On being waterboarded

• "The businesslike Senhora Padilha daubed away, took a purchase on the only available handhold, and then wrenched and wrenched again."—On getting a Brazilian

• "I am somewhat proud of my ability to 'keep my head,' as the saying goes, and to maintain presence of mind under trying circumstances. I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word."—On being waterboarded

• "I swear that several times she soothingly said that I was being a brave little boy ... Meanwhile, everything in the general area was fighting to retract itself inside my body."—On getting a Brazilian

• "If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."—On being waterboarded

• "I had no idea it would be so excruciating."—On getting a Brazilian

Hitchens ends his waterboarding piece with arguments both for and against the practice, but ultimately says, "I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words 'waterboard' and 'American' could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath." As for Brazilian bikini waxes, we're going to guess that he doesn't advocate the practice for himself after his experience, but that he's more than okay with inflicting it upon the fairer, unfunny sex.