Bear or Bare?
While eating lunch, I decided to catch up on some DVRed TV shows. The one I picked to watch was “What!? The Long and Short of Body Hair.” This was the most recent in the line of Logo’s “What!?” series of television. The description of the show through the cable box was “A well groomed man is in demand; removing leg, chest and arm hair.” When I first saw about this, I immediately set-up to record the show. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed with it.
From the start of the show, it was all about how everyone is expected to shave their bodies hairless now. This continued as a basis for a good 2/3 of the show. Only periodic clips of body hair positive talk ever appeared. Even during clips of Folsom’s fetish festival showed people getting waxed and removing body hair. There were baby’s ass smooth guys talking about how smooth was better and healthier and how it was necessary for looking more professional and being successful. When did shaving off all your body hair suddenly make you healthier? Also, unless jock straps have become the new board room attire, how is waxing your chest and ass going to make you look more professional and how is anyone going to know? They do admit that facial hair is an “in” thing, but they compare it to make-up on women though — a way to stylize your look. It wasn’t until the end of the show when they spent more time on the bear event they hit briefly on earlier that the show had people spending any real time talking about how it’s ok to be hairy. A clip of a female who did body waxes for men but liked guys hairy was one of the last clips of the show. Until then, they just talked about how important and modern it was to get waxed smooth. The real joke of the whole thing is that most of the guys getting waxed were doing it for girls and this is a show for a gay network. The people who are saying they like the body hair are all bearish guys (except that one female waxer).
One professional who did talk positively about his being hairy is pro-gay and anti-bully spokesperson Ben Cohen (shown left with an ad for his Stand Up Foundation). While he did admit to shaving his legs (which was for functionality of the sport, not for fashion or image), he remains furry elsewhere and even refuses to shave his face as he feels he looks too young otherwise.
Do I seem biased about this? Sure. If you’ve seen my picture on my About page, you can probably tell I’m pretty bearish myself. I’m a gay man into men. I’m not interested in some guy who looks like he hasn’t gone through puberty yet. I like the look of hair both of a guy’s face and body. Yes, there are some hot guys out there who are smooth, like my fellow blogger the Gay Comic Geek. For the most part though, a furry chest and face will draw my attention first. When I see in a profile that someone trims/shaves their body, I find that a turn off. I prefer a guy to look at they were meant to be. For people to put others down for that, especially on a network that is supposed to be supportive of a group that has been put down in the past (gays), is extremely disappointing.
