HAIR NECESSITIES
Being a furry man in a waxers’ world can be very confusing. Stuart Heritage combs over the tangled relationship between the hirsute and happiness
Reality TV has made tanned, smooth bodies de rigueur. But why should we feel ashamed of our hair, asks MH’s columnist?
Acouple of nights ago, my son asked me why he wasn’t as hairy as a gorilla. He wasn’t to know it, but it was a bit of a delicate subject. Because while I’m not as hairy as a gorilla, I’m not too far off.
I am covered in hair: hairy chest, hairy legs, hairy shoulders, hairy bum, hairy back. My crotch is so hairy that it looks like someone accidentally chopped off their finger and lost it in a sack of barber’s sweepings. I have 7cm-thick strips of hairless skin running down the sides of my torso and, ironically, I’m going bald. Other than that, I am pretty much completely covered.
Increasingly, I am feeling alone in that. It seems that men are doing everything in their power to rid themselves of body hair. A Mintel study from 2018 found that 46% of men removed hair from their bodies, a 10% increase from a similar study in 2016. Another 57% of men aged between 16 and 24 trim their pubes, while 42% shave their armpits. In fact, it’s estimated that young men remove body hair with roughly the same frequency as young women do.
It isn’t hard to see why. The growing interest in male body-hair removal has been put down to the so-called Love Island effect: all the shirtless, hairless, ripped nimrods who tend to populate that show are supposedly making men feel insecure. But it stretches further back than that. James Bond used to have a hairy chest and now he doesn’t. David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo have been posing topless for years, and they don’t have a single chest hair to show between them.
For those of us who were dealt a hairy hand at puberty, it can be a source of insecurity. I didn’t undress to shower after PE at school. I hate sunbathing. I go to a CrossFit gym full of cartoonishly alpha, slightly homoerotic men who can’t wait to rip their shirts off at the start of each WOD; mine always stays resolutely on throughout. I have even been known to forewarn girls about it in the past, when it looked like we would be going home together.
But looking at the statistics, I have it easy. A study last year revealed that 55% of men felt embarrassed about their body hair, to the point that it actually prevented them from participating in certain activities. A third never go swimming because of it. A quarter don’t go to the gym. One in five claimed that their body hair had a negative effect on their sex life.
But what to do? I have to admit that I went through an obsessive clipping stage when I was younger, but the regrowth always itched. I once tried to Veet my entire back, but that proved impossible, thanks to all the stupid bones and joints I have.
It’s only now, at the age of nearly
40, that I have finally come to terms with it. I’m just a hairy bloke.
Actually, no, I’m making a statement. For decades, now, there have been feminists who refuse to shave their armpits as a deliberate rebellion against beauty standards. So, consider this my stand. Take my refusal to trim as a protest against a culture that preys on insecurity. I am just too old and tired to care about this sort of thing any more. I am a hairy man. Hear me chafe.
Son, I’m sorry that you aren’t as hairy as a gorilla. But give it around 15 years. With your genes, it’s probably only a matter of time.
“For those who were dealt a hairy hand at puberty, it can be a source of insecurity”