Furry-Chested Males: An Endangered Species?
It was something your boisterous, backslapping uncles were fond of saying (sniggering, while you took your first sip of whiskey). Something soldier boys used to throw out as gracefully as a well-strung line of curses. Something brawny locker-room brutes leveled with the accuracy of wet, snapping towels.
“It’ll put hair on your chest!”
It’s a saying you don’t hear much anymore.
Why? Because hair is the last thing the modern American male wants on his chest. We live in a generation weaned on years of hairless Calvin Klein ads that sees a baby-smooth chest as a necessary part of the body ideal. Great pecs are a plus, but they must be shaved or waxed. Pass the Nair.
Then along comes this potty-mouthed, putrid-toothed bloke to make hairy chests groovy again--shagalicious, even. Austin Powers, the gentleman spy who go-go dances his way through “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” may do more to reaffirm male chest hair than anyone since King Kong. With his dead-animal pelt of a chest--hair so profuse you could braid it--Austin has empowered the furry male to feel good about himself again. Or at least joke about it.
Still, Austin and his hairy brotherhood will probably go back to hiding their hair instead of celebrating it once the movie rakes in its many millions. Then we’ll be left once again with hairless imps like Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt--urchins who couldn’t muster a single chest hair among them. This is the stuff of heterosexual heartthrobbing?
But it isn’t only the straight world that has produced a legion of follically fearful. The gay community has long worshiped the hairless Adonis: Marky Mark with his hairless six-pac and pecs didn’t dominate Times Square for years for nothing. Look at the coverboys of Men’s Fitness or Men’s Health and you’ll be hard pressed to find a hairy chest. In the most recent edition of GQ, nearly all the advertising featuring bared torsos--Lagerfeld, Gucci, Parliament cigarettes, even Durex condoms--showed guys whose chests were clean as Casper.
What has sent a new generation of men to electrolysis and the wax pot? Advertising certainly is a culprit. Movies are too, with the inevitable well-oiled thug sporting a broken nose and a pronounced chest tuft (good guys are girl-smooth, bad guys look like Grizzly Adams). Children are conditioned to cheer for the hairless hero: The new, animated “Tarzan” swung into theaters with the Lord of the Apes boasting a chest as hairless as Jane’s; in the popular arena of wrestling, hairy-chested hulks like WCW’s Bill Goldberg are the rara avis among a throng of oiled, hairless Samsons.
The finger, too, must point to women, who as a whole have never been fans of simian man. Romance novels never feature coverboys with lawns of chest hair. The Chippendale dreamboats that send so many female pulses racing have all just been freshly depilated for their enjoyment.
In the online magazine Salon, Lisa Palac recognizes this wrong during a viewing of “Austin Powers” with her boyfriend: “Isn’t it just a little bit refreshing to see at least one hairy man up there on the big screen? I mean, the reality is that men are by and large hairy, but where are their media representatives? Nowhere. Not in GQ or up on the latest Calvin Klein underwear billboard or even in the world of pornography where the ideal, the waxed torso, reigns supreme.”
The plight of the hairless man prompted an essay by David Skinner in the Weekly Standard. Skinner fears for the future of the hairy man, especially since all one sees on the big screen are male specimens who look like they’ve yet to hit puberty. “All of them look like boys. One even sees older actors depilated to look like the boy-man stars who now capture every significant romantic role,” Skinner writes. “The traditional Hollywood aesthetic in which old was never sexy has been carried to a new extreme: Now only the immature is sexy. Forget heroin chic, the hip aesthetic of the early ‘90s; say hello to permanent adolescence.”
It’s truly a gruesome thought. Where are furballs like Burt Reynolds and Alec Baldwin when you need them? Elbowed out by hairless Tom Cruises. And hairy titans of mythic appeal like Ernest Hemingway? A distant memory.
Regular hairy Joe Dave Oeskovic Jr. of New Jersey celebrates his hirsute nature with his own hairy pec Web site (members.aol.com/pinner/) on which he talks about the trials and tribulations of being a furry guy. One of his essays deals with wearing to the beach a tank top that would expose his hairy shoulders and chest.
While Oeskovic questions this hairless world we live in, he also has a good sense of humor about it. “Just last night I saw a commercial for a Calvin Klein men’s fragrance. They were touting Father’s Day so it was a child and man in a hammock,” he said. “The man was shirtless, hairless and tanned. Now, maybe I grew up in a different generation but somehow I can’t imagine saying, ‘Mom, where’s Dad?’ and her responding, ‘He’s out having his chest waxed at the tanning salon, he’ll be back in about an hour.’ ”
Dad waxing away his very dadness? Eradicating that which defines his role as hunter and protector? It’s happening and it’s scary, Skinner writes. “We cannot erase general notions of manliness from popular culture and expect today’s boys to be tomorrow’s protectors and providers,” Skinner states. “Where can one find reflections of manliness, if everywhere you turn, the American male seems boyish, hairless, shorn of any sign that he is an adult?”
Boy, er, man, are we in trouble! Better put some hair on your chest.
