Mark, Caz, Magnus and I had a glorious, tough fifteen miler today, running in the cool and the mists of the Angeles National Forest. (If there are any of my readers who know the San Gabriel Mountains, we ran from Chantry Flats to Newcomb’s Saddle via First Water and the Sturtevant Trail. After years of running, those very names reek of sweat and excitement to me.) Four tired and happy men we were at the end. I ran shirtless, the other lads wore tights and long sleeves. There were a few chilly gusts, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Of course, I just got over a nasty cold, so this probably wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had.
We ended up at Noah’s bagels. For a decade now, I’ve ordered the same thing over and over: cinnamon raisin bagel toasted with sun-dried tomato shmear. I have no idea what anything else tastes like there. (And yes, New Yorkers, I know, your bagels are better. I concede.)
We’ve got quite a good (and mostly civil) discussion going in the comments section below Friday’s post about feminism and loneliness. I’m grateful that Amanda Marcotte discussed it at length yesterday, and offered some interesting insights (and sent lots of welcome hits this way.) If you don’t already read Pandagon, read my post and hers as well as both comments sections.
And as anyone who has been doing any reading this week in the feminist blogosphere knows, we’ve all been obsessed with hair. Mostly, we’ve been interested in how women groom — or don’t — the hair below eye level. I posted here, Happy posted here, Jill posted here (and was ripped here), Zuzu posted here, Lauren here, and if you poke around elsewhere, I am sure a dozen other feminist bloggers have weighed in on issues of waxing and plucking and related strategies. It may seem silly, but it isn’t, not really, not when we’re all convinced that we have an obligation to live lives of integrity and we disagree passionately about whether or not our most intimate grooming habits are or aren’t consistent with our core values.
It’s been pointed out in many corners that women are not the only ones who remove body hair. While in an earlier era, only athletes in certain sports (body building and swimming, for example) regularly removed chest and leg hair, within the past ten years the number of men "going bare" has increased enormously. Pick up any men’s magazine (Men’s Health, etc.), and the chances are good the bare-chested model on the cover will be completely or nearly hairless. Many folks assume that the focus on hairlessness has to do with the tremendous increase in body anxiety among men that we’ve witnessed in recent years. It’s widely argued that men are more and more likely to be judged on their appearance these days, and as a consequence we’re seeing an upsurge in male body hair removal. Men are, perhaps, beginning to suffer from the same concerns from which women have suffered for considerably longer.
One key difference, however, goes unremarked most of the time. Classically, the reason why men remove chest hair is that hair obscures muscle. A rug, or even some wisps, may make it more difficult to display one’s pecs. Taking off the hair immediately makes the chest look bigger and makes the upper body appear more defined. Trust me, I know this first hand. When I was lifting a lot of weights about a decade ago, I "Naired" my chest a couple of times. (I had one brief experience with waxing at the hands of a helpful but not very skilled female friend. Yikes.) The "Nair" burned, particularly around my nipples (which were pierced at the time), but it got rid of all the hair from my throat to below my belt line.
The visual results were instant — my chest looked manlier, which struck me as oddly paradoxical. The hair (which I’ve had on my chest since I was 16) "should" have been the primary signifier of masculinity. After all, we’re all familiar with the the exhortation "Come on, do it, it’ll put hair on your chest" — which is usually said about something dangerous or "manly". But in our world, pectoral muscles are an even more powerful signifier of manliness, particularly because their appearance is more likely to be the result of effort rather than genetics. In order to enhance my masculine appeal, I "had" to remove what was quintessentially masculine. As I washed the stinging Nair off in the shower, the contradiction did not escape me!
Male porn stars generally have very closely cropped pubic hair, if they have any at all. (Their female co-stars increasingly have little or none.) Many women who wax claim it enhances their comfort, or their sense of pleasure, or — and this seems to be the most frequent — their sense of cleanliness. (Even when they know intellectually that body hair is not inherently dirty.) But the reason for a man to remove his pubic hair is radically different — as with the chest, hair "down there" obscures. An erect penis automatically looks bigger when there’s little or no hair about. In porn, where "size matters" tremendously, there’s little doubt that a male actor can enhance his attributes by removing his pubic hair. Of course, while both men and women have pubic hair naturally (and most women, and some men, don’t have chest hair) men and women are removing the "hair down there" for radically different reasons. For many women, anxiety about cleanliness is at least one factor — while for men (even outside of the porn industry), the old anxiety about being "too small" is the primary motivation.
I haven’t removed any body hair from the vast expanses below my neck since early in the second Clinton Administration. I enjoyed the visual effect of hairlessness, but hated the stubble as it came back in. And though I found that some women liked a bare chest, I found — and here I step into dangerous territory — that the women I was most likely to actually want to be with were those who liked men with hair. Somehow, there was something suspicious to me about women who liked their men too smooth. Perhaps it was — and here I psychoanalyze without a license — a sense I got that women who were turned off by chest hair were in some sense intimidated by or frightened of certain aspects of male sexuality. (Bring on the flaming, but so help me, that was my experience. I agree that my anecdotes, no matter how numerous, do not in any way constitute data!) I will note that when my teenage girls in youth group talk about what they like and don’t like in guys, most are enthusiastic about hairless, smooth chests. Given that those are what the chests of most of their peers look like, it makes sense. But the connection between eroticising hairlessness and a kind of adolescent view of sexuality does seem to be logical, if nothing else.
I don’t trust Esquire Magazine with much. (They named the no-doubt talented and lovely, but very young Scarlett Johannson the "sexiest woman alive" earlier this year, a decision which mystified me. In my mind, she falls into the category of "much younger women I would set up with my college-age nephew, not my best friend.") But they do report this month that "chest hair is back", which, if true, I find quite encouraging. Of course, the linked article implies that it’s all a backlash against metro-sexuality:
The area rugs popularized by Hugh (Jackman) et al. are more than just decorative statements; they’re welcome beacons of masculinity in a too-calm sea of feyness. They’re a rebuttal to the androgynous Jude Law pretty-boy aesthetic and the skinny-pantsed Strokesification of our time. In short: Your chest hair is hot. Own it.
Uh, my chest hair is not a rebuttal to anything. It is what it is — a tribute to my DNA, which decreed (thank you, ancestors) that I would naturally have hair on my head for life, hair on my chest in moderate abundance, and very little hair on my back. (That constellation of gifts almost makes up for the hopeless nearsightedness.) Praise be to God that my wife loves every last little sprout and tuft! (Especially, bless her heart, the increasing number of white ones.)
Note: After further reflection, the photo that was here of said chest hair has been removed.
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