It can be black and curly. Or blond and straight. Or red and frizzy. Really, the color and texture possibilities are infinite as little hairs sprout up the shaft to make a home in the follicle. Some consider body hair an unwanted weed, whacking it off by any means possible. Others enjoy the natural look. What it all shaves down to, though, is personal preference.
Female hair
On a ride between her Marine base and her hometown, one of the passengers in Vicie Record’s car blasted a porn through her laptop.
Records, a junior in history, described her encounter with that pornographic movie, which celebrated women blessed with mountains of hair. She and her military friends dubbed it the “hairy porn” when they bought it as a joke for a friend -Ã who didn’t want it and gave it back to Records.
“I’m trying to drive and not look, but then the girls would scream and I would have to look. And there was this woman, she didn’t have a happy trail, it was a happy forest — like a freeway. It went from her belly button down to her knees and it was like Jerri Curl upon Jerri Curl,” she said.
“And the guys were like ‘Jesus Christ how do you even find it!’ It was like a train wreck — you don’t want to watch it but you have to. It was ridiculous; in that case I would say Ôyes, you need some grooming.'”
For girls the aversion to body hair begins at a young age. The younger and more hairless the better à a race to the smooth bodies of Victoria’s Secret models and porn stars.
Crystal Archbell, a senior in business management, began receiving continuous laser hair removal treatments as a sophomore in high school. During the first few years, treatments were every few months but now she only goes once or twice per year.
“It’s a laser gun and they shoot it at the hair follicle and it is supposed to burn it so it won’t regrow; it feels like bee stings. I had to take numbing medication and topical cream but I always felt everything,” Archbell said. “I even took stuff to knock me out and I still felt everything.”
The darker and the coarser hair, the better laser hair removal works because the dark hair absorbs more heat, according to Archbell. And in addition to the pain, there are other side effects.
“I think the reason my legs don’t tan very well anymore is because of it,” Archbell said.
Hair removal is an issue for women. Of the 32 women who participated in a survey about body hair, 100 percent shaved their legs and their armpits. And 82 percent pay attention to their genital region.
Records blamed insecurity because when women are shown a picture of what they are “supposed” to look like, they follow it.
“It’s been like that throughout history — women putting birds on their heads in order to attract men,” she said. “If society put less emphasis on what women should look like, like Victoria’s Secret models, it wouldn’t be so important. But I think women are insecure with themselves so they go to great lengths to change it, but it’s amazing — now men are doing the same thing.”
Females in the 21st century feel the need to be smooth, Megan, a senior in English, said. She acknowledges that there is a double standard between women and men concerning body hair, but said girls impose it on themselves.
“I would shave my legs and armpits even if I didn’t have a boyfriend, because women are supposed to be soft,” Megan said. “We’re not supposed to be like hairy men.”
And men agree with her.
Of the 30 males surveyed, 80 percent prefer a woman’s nether regions hair-free or trimmed. The majority also have a very serious attitude about women’s body hair. Some would even stop dating a girl if she did not participate in regular grooming.
“It’s mandatory for girls, expected for guys. I’d tell her to shave it; if not I would stop seeing her,” Ken Wyman, a sophomore in political science, said. “One of the parts of dating is testing the product, seeing all aspects. And if she isn’t into grooming we’re not compatible.”
Parts of a woman’s body are more important than others when it comes to popular opinion regarding body hair. All of the men surveyed prefer shaved legs, 80 percent want a girl to groom her eyebrows and 80 percent want a girl with clipped genital hair. All three beating out the old-school armpits, which only 77 percent of the men preferred shaved.
“If a girl has [as] hairy legs as mine, that would be a priority, but she has already passed the point where I’m not going anywhere near her so it doesn’t really matter,” Wyman said. “If you go that long without shaving your legs, you’re not my kind of girl.”
There are some guys out there who don’t mind Record’s “hairy porn.” But for the majority, men and women surveyed want females sensually hair-free.
“You don’t want your partner to have to stop what they’re doing to hack up a short and curly,” Daniel Suchy, a senior in biomedical engineering, said. “For body hair find a salon and get waxed. Less is more and none is great.”
Male hair
The Philips Bodygroom man stands on the computer screen with a white robe on and a confident look on his face. Body hair, he says, used to be a sensitive and uncomfortable issue for him. But now, with this new groomer he can shave his back, chest and *beep*.
For every “sensitive” area, the commercial silences the word and a picture of a fruit, vegetable or inanimate object pops on the screen, alluding to what he is talking about.
“Let me tell you,” he says. “The whole issue used to make me quite uncomfortable, but these days with a hair-free back, well-groomed shoulders and an extra optical inch on my [ruler]. Let’s just say life has gotten pretty darn cozy.”
The body hair obsession for men has begun, no longer a phenomena only attributed to females.
Ken Wyman, a sophomore in political science, and Michael Kelley, a senior in biological sciences, both own a Bodygroom.
“I have a Bodygroom for guys. It’s bigger than a Micro Touch. This is like an electric razor but designed for everybody else, it’s good for touch-ups and everything and only 40 bucks,” Wyman said. “That shows you right there that society is leaning towards it. It’s becoming more acceptable.”
Wyman describes himself as a victim of genetics — his body hair is patchy in some places and full in all the wrong places.
“I have the worst body hair of all time,” he said. “It’s a mess and you have to blend it all together, so you have to trim. And that is everything from my calves to my thighs to my crotchal region.”
And Wyman is not alone.
Women can also see the pressure put on men to look like movie stars and underwear models.
“Now men get pressured into looking like Marky Mark back when he was a Calvin Klein model or whatever, so they get pressure like we do,” Vicie Records, a junior in history, said. “Some of them they don’t feel manly if they shave their chest or whatever, but that’s starting to change.”
Kelley not only sees altering his body hair as a measure of attractiveness, but also as a personal hygiene practice and common courtesy. Men expect women to shave their bodies, and now women are expecting the same.
In a survey of 62 students conducted in the brickyard by Technician, 60 percent of men surveyed groomed their pubic regions, and 50 percent of women preferred men who did just that. “I expect girls to be trimmed or shaved, and I know a lot of them have a problem with going down a guy if he has a bush,” Kelley said. “I shave my balls because girls don’t want hairy balls in their mouth.”
Women are not the only ones who receive the benefits of men shaving their pubes. Like the Bodygroom man said, the lack of hair gives some added length to the view of a man’s goods.
Kelley, Wyman and Dan Suchy, a senior in biomedical engineering, all agreed on this point.
“The shorter hair acts an as illusion, longer length,” Suchy said.
Not all girls are buying that myth though. Megan, a senior in English, said men are crazy when they think women are fooled by the lack of hair. She prefers her men to be a little more natural.
“Too manicured is really weird. When a guy takes more time than me it’s weird,” she said. “I like my men to look like men. I like a little 5 o’clock shadow. That’s kind of sexy, kind of hot. Like Dr. McDreamy.”
The majority of men have not bought into this new trend, as 70 percent of men surveyed do not alter their chest hair and 68 percent do not touch their eyebrows.
The second biggest concern for women surveyed about male body hair, after the genital region, is chest hair. Of women surveyed, 43 percent prefer men to take the clippers to the fur on their chests.
Wyman said grooming male body hair is an increasing trend, and he offers advice to those who have not yet tried it.
“When you first start it’s terrible, sitting in class squirming around, putting your hand in your pocket to scratch your ball sack. Especially when you sweat it’s like little balls of torture,” he said. “There is nothing worse then stubble on your ball sack. But once you get past the initial itching you’ll be all right.”
