Paris Jackson, the only daughter of the late Michael Jackson, recently posted an Instagram video in commemoration of her father’s birthday. She received some negative remarks about her armpit hair.
Based on the photos I’ve seen, Miss Jackson’s armpits are unshaven but trimmed, not what I would call overgrown or hirsute, by any stretch.
But this raises a question. How does untrimmed body hair affect beauty and sex appeal? Body hair—on both men and women—seems to go in and out of fashion. National and cultural factors also seem to exert an influence.
I am naturally hairy, for better or worse. I had chest hair when I was still in junior high. I also have hair on my arms, legs, and back.
I was born too late to capitalize on all this excess bodily carpet. In the 1970s, chest hair was associated with male sex appeal and masculine virility. Burt Reynolds and a handful of other hairy male celebrities drove this trend.
By the time I reached full adulthood in the 1990s, however, things were going the other way. This was the dawning era of the manscaped metrosexual.
Then both men and women began trimming and shaving their pubic hair. I won’t go too far down that line of inquiry, so as to keep this post safe for work. But the larger message here was that body hair was out of fashion.
I was late in picking up on this, as I am on so many things. One day, a friend flippantly asked me if I planned to show up at a summertime social event in a tank top with my “back hair hanging out”. (This person is not a friend anymore, but that’s another story for another time.)
I might have replied that in 1976, my ample body hair would have been considered the height of sexy. But this conversation took place well into the twenty-first century.
I have since succumbed to the manscaping trend. I now keep my back hair in check with a battery-operated device called a Mangroomer. I have become accustomed to having less body hair than I once did, and I’ll pull out the Mangroomer when I start feeling a little shaggy back there.
As far as women’s armpit hair goes: I suppose I’m a prisoner of my early biases. In my formative years, women religiously shaved their armpits but never shaved their privates. Once again, my inclinations and preferences are the exact opposite of twenty-first-century trends.
-ET