A couple years ago, I was down in Dewey Beach pulling my usual Saturday late afternoon routine: Crushin’ some late afternoon brews on the beach in a Solo cup while tossing some frisbee before heading to the Bottle & Cork for jam session. I didn’t have a shirt on because (1. it was July (2. it’s the beach. Two of life’s greatest pleasures as a dude are the ability to piss outside wherever you please and chill in the summer without a shirt, regardless of how dad-bodded out you are.
Thanks to a strong Teutonic gene pool, I’m a hairy dude. That afternoon some rando came up to me and commented “nice sweater” comment about my luscious, unkempt chest hair. Damn straight it is. Unless you’re a professional body builder, I’ve never understood the point of why dudes manscape their chest to look as waxed as Mike “The Situation” from Jersey Shore.
Fret no more, au naturel hairy Bros. Today is a triumphant day for us Burt Reynolds-worshipping hairy dudes. According to the New York Times Fashion section, chest hair is finally back in high brow fashion circles. That means manscapping — a term that came out of the mid-to-late ’00s metrosexual hype thanks to GQ’s body image ideals — can finally die in a smelly hair fire. Viva la chest hair!
Here are the money quotes from The Times:
Similarly, Gabriel Santos-Rocha, a 31-year-old model manager, stopped depilating roughly eight years ago, in his early 20s. “I thought that the ideal body had no hair,” he said. But frustration with all the upkeep nudged him back to his natural state. “I hated dealing with the maintenance and the stubble and the itching that came with it,” Mr. Santos-Rocha said.
The response to his furry physique has been positive. “I’ve never noticed anyone not liking my body hair,” he said.
…
Mr. Bess cited Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac — with his unbuttoned shirts and thatch of chest hair — as a prototype, adding that the preened look seems dated. “It gets a little too perfect, too mannequin-looking,” Mr. Bess said.
..
Christopher Oldstone-Moore, the author of the 2015 book “Of Beards and Men” and a senior lecturer at Wright State University, in Ohio, believes that an increasingly urban and digitized life has left some men “disconnected from their masculinity.”
“There are different ways to connect to your organic masculinity,” Dr. Oldstone-Moore said. “Hair is one way to do it.”
For 89% of the hairy population, chest hair never really went away. Prickly stubble is stupid and annoying to constantly deal with just because a couple prissy women doesn’t like it. Us hairy dudes flaunt that shit. It’s part of who we are. We find the ladies who love it and we get to be as low maintenance as possible with grooming. Don’t let the millions of dollars in marketing that shaving companies spend tell you otherwise.
The bigger badass is pretty obvious when you do a side-by-side comparison. Just look.
Never leave us again, chest hair.