Manscaping Monday: Waxing the Hair Suit

I'll just say right off that I'm not a manscaper. Now, I'm not a super hairy guy. But I still can't find the justification for taking all the hair off other parts of the body than the face. The more I read about other men's experiences with waxing, and think about why they do it, the more I'm convinced that it's a fashion conspiracy.

OK, maybe not a conspiracy, but a marketing invention. I was reading Waxed: Staff writer Gavon Laessig takes a personal journey through the manscape, and the writer starts off like this:

"Aside from occasional, youthful experiments with shaving, I've never been a big proponent of so-called "manscaping." It was just too hopeless. Considering my chest looks like a Joseph Conrad novel, you would need to napalm that manscape.

I've also avoided manscaping because I kind of took pride in a lush chest pelt. It harkened back to the days of Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds, when men were men and women were grossed out by those men. It was a simpler time.

Basically, due to laziness and misplaced machismo, I'm quite comfortable in my hair suit. It just fits."

He then goes through the process of waxing for us, describing the pain and the aftereffects of itching and raw skin: "The raw chest rubbing up against the fabric of my shirt is agony." Ouch! (And the before and after picture at the top of the article is rather disturbing...)

But the interesting tidbit for me was the idea that 53% of women surveyed "endorsed" chest grooming, whereas 83% of men didn't shave or wax their chests. So I wondered if the marketing piece comes through convincing women that men should shave or wax elsewhere, and then they convince us we need to do so.

What do you think? Is the pressure to manscape going to come from our wives and girlfriends?

Image: tamakisono at Flickr

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