Male grooming

Growing up eh? One minute you’re a tiny terror riding around town on a cool trike mowing down strangers’ feet, and the next minute you’re standing in front of the mirror wondering how the heck you got so hairy. But body hair shouldn’t be something for men to be embarrassed about, it should be celebrated! Our body hair is one of the few features that connects us to our animalistic past, a time when we were free to be hairy and to run around hunting and howling at the moon.

Here’s a celebration of male hair that grows everywhere.

Chest Hair

When I was a kid the first real sign that you were becoming a grown up was being able to grow a bad teenage moustache, and the second sign was being able to grow hair on your chest. I used to dream about having a manly thatch of hair across my chest that I could use to nestle a medallion in-between like my hero Magnum PI or David Hasselhoff on Baywatch. This was in my eyes what being a man was all about, having hair on your chest…and a medallion.

This is why it surprises me when some people go out of their way to get rid of their chest wigs at the earliest opportunity. Chest hair isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. Unless you’re a body builder, a swimmer or someone whose job involves being topless most of the time then my opinion on chest hair is that if it’s good enough for The Hoff then it’s good enough for us.

Back Hair

Nobody wants back hair; it doesn’t appear to serve any real purpose, especially when it’s on the back of the shoulder…well apart from a bit of extra warmth in the winter time or a handy bit of extra padding when you’re carrying a large backpack.

But what most men over look is that back hair can be useful; it can hide the terrifying spectacle of ‘back-ne’ or the dreaded spotty back. After asking a couple of buddies in a highly unscientific survey, most of them would much rather have a hairy back than having a spotty back. Luckily for myself, I have only a modest amount of back hair growth but when the time comes to get rid of it I usually opt for a rather tasty gizmo called the Philips Bodygroom Pro which is a trimmer specifically designed for tackling hair in the hard to reach regions.