Do You Still Manscape?

The pendulum’s been swinging back towards men being men for a few years now, and in that I mean that men have been found with their body hair intact in increasing percentages. Indeed, the practice of shaving, waxing, or by any other means removing hair below the neck has been in regression since late 2005 when GQ ran the article, “End of Manscaping as We Know It.”

I was surprised that this level of grooming became popular in the first place, though for the ladies’ sakes, I was glad to hear it. While there are surely many women out there who want to bed down with hairy men, most of the 4700 women who took the GQ poll from the same period claimed that they preferred their boyfriends and husbands to depilitate before they copulate. I have to wonder if those numbers are waning as well.

Personal confession time after the jump.

Yeah, I was surprised that it became popular, because I used to catch a lot of shit for doing all of those things myself, well before the rest of the world caught on. I’ve had a thing against my body hair from my high school years up. I find I smell less ripe after an active day if my pits are smooth, and I’ve been buzzing my crotch hair with a clippers for years. Hell, I’ll get specific – I shave clean as a whistle underneath, and trim it short (1/4″) above. The advent of cordless adjustable height beard trimmers are a godsend for the latter part of that practice, but only a safety razor, a little talent and oodles of steely nerve works for the former part.

The upshot: you sweat less, you stink less, and the whole area seems to be much more salacious to that certain someone from whom you’d like to receive certain attentions. And frankly, sex feels better because there is a lot more skin on skin contact.

The downshot: more time in the bathroom for grooming, needs to be performed at least twice weekly to keep the ballbag’s skin used to having a blade dragged across it without breaking out, and then there’s the horror of the occasional cut.

I don’t usually shave my torso, however. I hate doing that. I will use that same beard trimmer on it once in a while, especially in the summertime because it actually does make a hell of a difference in staying cool. I even take my arm hair down to a quarter inch in the summer.

Then again, I’m not an especially hirsute fellow. If the job was too daunting, if the density was too great and my back was a carpet, I’d probably give up entirely, rock the bear thing, and adopt a “fuck’em” attitude if anyone had a problem with it on the beach.

Anyway, that’s how I roll. What about you?