NYT article on hairy chests.
September 22, 2002
Bear Market
By ZARAH CRAWFORD
Ever since the bubble-gum rapper and thespian Mark Wahlberg
first slipped into a pair of Calvin Klein briefs back in
1992, the fortunes of the hairy chest -- that once-proud
symbol of rugged manhood -- have not run smooth. In a
fashion climate obsessed with images of youth, narcissism
and androgyny, the healthy pectoral pelt was reduced to a
cheap Mike Myers sight gag.
The male fitness magazine Men's Health, for example, hasn't
featured a hairy-chested model on its cover since 1995. And
even in the traditionally testosterone-soaked arena of
professional sport, the number of unashamedly hairy
athletes correlates to the number happy to pitch tobacco
products to children. Last year, according to Armkel
L.L.C., manufacturers of the hair-removal solution Nair, 30
percent of men aged 18 to 34 regularly shaved their chests.
It's fitting, then, that 30 years after Burt Reynolds posed
au naturel for Cosmopolitan on a bearskin rug rivaled only
in luxuriance by the Bandit's own magnificent coat, the
wheel of fashion appears to have turned full circle. At the
recent fall fashion shows, the pasty, snake-hipped rent
boys and dolphin-smooth himbos -- who have sulked, preened
and pouted their way down international catwalks for so
many seasons -- were, if not entirely replaced, at least
upstaged. The new models were less pretty -- older, hairier
-- grown-up men, in fact. In the front row, this rebirth of
butch was attributed to Sept. 11 and the ensuing images of
heroic firefighters, police officers and rescue workers
that were beamed around the world.
But the cult of musky he-man fur is not just sprouting on
the catwalks. Hugh Jackman, George Clooney and Russell
Crowe, some of Hollywood's hottest leading men, all proudly
sport hairy chests. Crowe also has the distinction of being
name-checked on ''Sex and the City,'' hitting hot buttons
as that gang's favorite masturbatory lover. While in the
gay community, always the cutting edge for male grooming
trends, waxed gym bunnies are having to make way for bears:
those big, ultramasculine men, whose beards and bellies
make the local gay bar look like a Crosby, Stills and Nash
convention.
''In Hollywood, very often if a man's body is hairless, it
represents luxury and leisure,'' says Donald F. Reuter, the
author of ''Shirtless: The Hollywood Male Physique.''
''During the Depression, for example, leading men were
hyper-groomed, and smooth. Only men who did hard manual
labor were swarthy and hairy. Not having to work or worry
about money, that was the fantasy.''
Throughout the 1980's and 90's, media heroes were
20-something millionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon
Valley, and positive images of working-class men were
almost nonexistent. But then came the tech crash and Enron.
And suddenly, we want our men to look as if they do honest
work again, and not spend half their time in front of a
mirror. Of course, all this could easily be dismissed as so
much fatuous fashion punditry if it weren't for the fact
that in the second week of October, the designer Tom Ford
will be betting his reputation on it. Ford, a man who reads
the zeitgeist like other guys read the sports pages --
also, incidentally, the man who found fame by freeing Gucci
of its perma-tanned-hairy-chests-and-medallions baggage --
has chosen the model Samuel de Cubber as the face of M7,
Yves Saint Laurent's new signature men's fragrance.
Although the advertisement shows de Cubber naked, the
model's most striking feature is not his flaccid,
uncircumcised penis -- this image, incidentally, like that
of the King on ''The Ed Sullivan Show,'' will be cropped at
the waist for mainstream publications -- but his
spectacularly hairy chest.
Not only is the M7 man's body slightly furrier than what
we're used to seeing, but it also lacks the standard-model
sculptured pecs, Popeye forearms and cheese-grater abs. He
even has the slightest suggestion of a belly. ''It's a very
natural body,'' Ford says. ''We really wanted someone who
really looked like a guy, not someone who was completely
groomed, with every hair on his chest shaved and plucked. *
It's a kind of male beauty that I don't think we've seen in
a long time, really since the 70's.''
It's only right that references to the decade that openly
celebrated the hirsute he-man reverberate throughout Ford's
campaign. De Cubber is a former tae kwon do champion who
took up modeling only while sidelined with a sports injury.
(Similarly, Burt Reynolds was poised to become a
professional football player before injury forced him to
try his hand at acting.) The convergence of men's cologne
and martial arts is pure 70's macho camp, conjuring an
image of Vegas Elvis doused in heady Hai Karate
after-shave, with a line of Memphis Mafiosi patiently
waiting their turn to be thrown to the mat. Ford's decision
to run a nude is also in part an homage to the seminal 1971
campaign for YSL Pour Homme. Daringly, it was Yves himself
who posed naked for that image, looking winsome yet defiant
upon a stack of leather cushions.
Choosing to call the fragrance M7 is no accident. It is
evocative of that suave, resourceful womanizer James Bond,
Agent 007, who has had a hairy chest for the duration of
his 40-year franchise. Even throughout the depilatorized
90's, Pierce Brosnan's Bond was dusted in discreet down.
According to Reuter, that's because the original and
greatest Bond, Sean Connery, has the most iconic chest of
all time -- rugged and natural.
And therein lies the rub. ''People imagine that the reason
so many famous leading men of the past shaved their chests
was out of censorship, as if the sight of a normal hairy
chest would send the audience into a foaming frenzy,''
Reuter says. ''The reality was that lots of those guys,
like Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster, who are remembered
as so macho, only had pathetic spotty little patches.'' And
as most men know, chest hair is unruly; it rarely grows in
a symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing way -- there's
usually too little of it, or too much -- unless, that is,
you're Sean Connery. Well, actually, even if you are Sean
Connery.
In her autobiography, ''Hairdresser to the Stars,'' Ginger
Blymyer (better known as Sugar Blymyer) recounts how,
during the filming of ''The Presidio,'' she helped the hunk
o' haggis out with a little deforestation. Connery ''took
off his kimono and * I began to clip the hair on his
glorious chest, being very careful not to take too much
off. We worked together. I'd clip and then comb. He'd look
in the mirror and then say, 'Take a little more off.'
Finally he was quite satisfied.'' Blymyer recounts that
this deed and ''dyeing Redford's eyelashes'' were the two
most extraordinary experiences of her career.
It's possible that the images currently being offered up by
Tom Ford et al. (the middle-aged diving hunk in the Lipitor
commercial comes to mind) are a healthier, more inclusive
alternative to the follicle-free muscle boys who have
dominated the last decade. But the reality for the average
guy on the street will probably be the same; in his quest
to achieve a more authentic, natural -- hairier -- look, he
will once again find himself battling nature. But whatever
the long-term cultural repercussions of guys embracing
their inner hairy man, one thing is certain: the pages and
pages of men's magazines previously dedicated to methods of
hair removal will soon be answering all your questions
about growing and grooming it.
Zarah Crawford is a writer and interior decorator in
London.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
