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Style-savvy men are bearing their chest hair this season. But
will it send women running to the woods. Kevin Braddock puts
his pelt to the test.
This year, I’m backing Bush. Not the politician, but the
look. Because hairy is hot. Take Yves Saint Laurent’s M7
and Rive Gauche ad campaigns where former Tae Kwan Do champ Samuel
de Cubber lolls naked, displaying a luxuriant forest of chest hair,
an image so masculine you can practically smell testosterone rising
from the page. Or the man behind the campaign and regular hairy
chest-bearer, Tom Ford, who recently pronounced‘ I like body
hair… I’m into natural bush. I think it’s masculine.
I personally like having hair on my chest,’ (he added, ‘I
can’t stand shaved balls’ - but that’s another
matter entirely).
Meanwhile at the recent menswear collections, hairy chests were
as common as square jawlines and washboard stomachs, revealing
that designers including Dries Van Noten, Helmut Lang and Jean
Paul Gaultier have all caught the fuzz bug too. Indeed challenging
the recent fashion orthodoxy that for decades banished the bush
to style Siberia, it seems a pec pelt framed by an open neck shirt
or low-cut vest, is currently the look to cook.
Theoretically, it’s never been a better time to display
your Real Man credentials. England’s Rugby XV victory showed
up premiership football players as the manicured nancies they so
obviously are; The Kings Of Leon have legitimised hairy rock; and
a former girlfriend and I practically split up over her lust for
Lord Of the Rings hairball hero Viggo Mortensen.
Personally I gave into being hairy ages ago. I grew accustomed
to renegade whiskers sprouting from my T-shirt and wasn’t
ashamed to lounge on a beach full of Lungberg clones in all my
defiant, full-frontal hairiness. But it’s been tough. In
a world where many womens’ ideal of masculinity is a man
with the body of Schwarzenegger and the skin texture of Harry Potter,
surely the crucial question is not ‘are hairy chests
cool?’ but ‘do they help you pull?’
In search of an answer, I book myself in for a chest pelt trim
at Selfridges Men’s Grooming Salon in London. Clipped to
a close - but rugged - Number 4, I set off sporting an outré vest
cut so low I can almost see my navel. Yet I find my newly-outed
hirsuteness stirs in me both profound embarrassment and an animalistic
thrill. It’s like walking round with your flies purposefully
undone.
Reactions from women, meanwhile, span terror and excitement by
way of hilarity, mystification and indifference. Lorraine, a Pret
A Manger lunchtime customer, eyes the bush with a discernible glimmer. ‘Personally,
I love hairy chests,’ she beams. ‘The problem is you
never get to see them.’ The same can’t be said of shop
assistant Rose, who suggests it’s about as sexy as a comb-over. ‘It
looks dated. I mean, men don’t have to be completely smooth,
but come on: this is just caveman.’ While barfly Carine’s
knitted brow and eye-rolling suggest we won’t be exchanging
phone numbers either. ‘I like a man to be smooth,’ she
mulls. ‘I think it’s softer. Chest hair is just too
rough.’
It would seem the bush protocol is all a question of degree. As
with lingerie, it’s all about how little you show: the intimation
of sexuality being far more seductive than an overt display. It
also would appear to be a question of timing: the bush comes into
its own during the sexually-charged hours of nighttime. At a party
later on, compliments flow. ‘So many men look like girls
these days, this is far more manly,’ trills my friend Lindsey,
adding ‘Can I touch it?’
Okay, so I was singing Tom Jones’s ‘It’s Not
Unusual’ on a karaoke machine at the time, but the Bush effect
is clear. You won’t win everyone, but you’ll quickly
find out who’s more disposed to sleeping with you. Either
way, it’s an experience to put hairs on anyone’s chest.
© Kevin Braddock 2004 |
