These days, it’s not just swimmers and gay dudes who are expected to go hairless.
Andrew Adam Newman writes in the New York Times that society’s taste is changing from a predilection for fur to a desire for bare skin. Annual sales of body trimmers were reported by Nielsen to be more than $10 million.
Although the story spends a good deal of time talking about new products that allow men to groom on their own instead of having to embarrass themselves by asking for help, there were a few colorful comments about the latest fetish of our culture.
“Women universally are not keen on back hair, and when they talk about men’s bodies, that’s one of the least attractive things,” says Rose Cameron, who makes her money in the somewhat surprising field of men’s grooming analysis. “It’s like hair on women’s thighs now—it’s just not done.”
And this quote was a complete curve ball: “You haven’t lived until you’ve been in a bathroom with a man watching him shave all his body parts,” says Carl Kammer, who develops new products at Remington, one of a few big manufacturers of shavers.
And the ultimate plug for a personal trimmer? “It works really well,” Anna Bryce tells Newman. “He doesn’t need my help with that anymore, which is nice because I have a lot of other stuff to do besides shave my husband’s back.”
Can we get an Amen?
—Seth Putnam