Body hair traditionally served our ancestors well from a long bygone era. Before we lived in heated houses and had other creature comforts for skincare and grooming, body hair helped humans survive in harsh conditions regardless of whether it was hot or cold. In addition to helping to regulate body temperature, body hair offers other health benefits related to sex (pubic hair), chafing prevention (underarm hair) and protection from the sun (scalp hair) among others.
If you’ve ever shaved, you’ve probably cut yourself at least a few times and may have experienced an infection or at least some bloodletting in that regard. Things you generally don’t do when you don’t shave. So leaving body hair intact may have other advantages too when you think about the side effects and cost of hair removal.
The truth is that these days, body hair largely serves aesthetic purposes for the average person rather than protective ones although certainly some hair still does serve an important purpose. If you shave your head like I do, you may miss the days of when you didn’t have to wear a hat and use sunblock on a sunny day…
But while body hair serves a purpose in many cases, that doesn’t mean that our perception and views towards body hair is also positive.
Perception Of Body Hair
How do women feel about men’s body hair? Research appears to show that women generally like body hair on men within reason. As an example, research done by Men’s Journal showed that of 105 women, 78% (78 women) said they like it whereas the remaining 27% of women preferred a hairless male.
How do men feel about their own body hair? Statista asked men of various ethnicities aged 18 or over a series of questions about their opinions on body hair. Here is a selection of the questions and the results shown as a range given differences between men of various races:
Between 32% and 45% of men won’t allow society to decide which body hair they remove/shave.
So a significant percentage of men (ie. a majority) do take society’s view of body hair into account when deciding how to deal with it, if at all.
17%-32% believe that grown out body hair is a sign of unkemptness.
Quite a wide range of opinion from 17% (Asian men) to 32% (Other races of men not specified). But most men across the board do not agree that grown out body hair is a sign of unkemptness. So most men surveyed don’t feel the need to trim or shave body hair and instead may allow it grow naturally.
Between 23% and 29% of men believe that removing it’s unmanly for men to remove all leg or arm hair.
Men seem fairly in agreement here. Most men seem ok with the idea of removing leg and arm hair. Part of this agreement probably has to do with the fact than men often don’t have significant arm or leg hair and are therefore ok with the idea of removing what they do have.
Only 7%-18% of men believe that chest hair is a sign of virility.
Again, a wide range of opinion from 7% (Asian men) to 18% (Black men) but the overall result regardless is that men overwhelmingly disagree that chest hair is a sign of virility.
Only 7%-12% of men are uncomfortable with their body hair.
According to results, the overwhelming majority of men are comfortable with body hair. Of course, if they weren’t they do something about it in the instance where they have too much ie. shave, wax, etc.
Body Hair Embarrassment
While the results above show that most men seem to be content with their body hair, alternative research took a different approach and asked men about their thoughts about body hair in their daily life.
Results from a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of back shaving product manufacturer BAKblade showed something different. From the New York Times article summarizing the survey results involving 2,000 men, it found that a significant percentage were embarrassed by their body hair to the point that they avoided activities as a result:
For example, nearly one-third of men surveyed (31 percent) said they’ve avoided swimming out of embarrassment over their body hair, while another one in four (27 percent) said they’ve avoided the gym.
New York Times
The research also showed that men’s biggest hangups were their chest hair (40% of respondents) and back hair (35% of respondents).
One area where the Statista survey and the OnePoll survey disagree slightly is the percentage of men who believe that good grooming habits related to haircare are unmanly. While almost half of male respondents agreed that their grooming habits weren’t the best, a significant percentage also felt that it had to do their lack of confidence in their own ability to take care of these tasks.
In terms of why else men don’t take care of personal grooming as much as they should, the OnePoll survey found the following:
So why aren’t men as on top of it as they should be? For starters, 44 percent of the men surveyed consider it “unmanly” for men to practice good grooming habits.
New York Times
Why Body Hair Is Good
Beyond the aforementioned benefits, body hair on men does offer aesthetic benefits depending on your perspective.
Facial hair does give men a masculine look since it’s generally something perceived as something only men are able to grow. And we’re in a time when facial hair is perfectly acceptable in all walks of life ie. work, play, etc.
Facial hair also gives us the opportunity to change our look especially for those of us who shave our head. It’s a nice contrast from your bald head. Plus facial hair tends to take the focus off your shaved head, drawing attention to the face area.
Scalp hair traditionally tends to be associated with youth. At least before it goes grey which conversely tends to be associated with age, as does balding. While that’s still largely the case, a shaved head as mentioned above is a very common thing for guys to do these days and in fact shaving your head can help you look younger. This is certainly true when compared to a balding or greying look, where you’re trying desperately to hang onto the remaining hair that you have.
Conclusion
- Benefits such as helping to regulate body temperature and protection against the sun, from chafing etc helps to explain why body hair is good and offers benefits to men.
- The perception of body hair amongst men seems to suggest that for the most part, body hair is acceptable although back hair is something they’d prefer to get rid of.
- Women generally like facial hair and body hair although back hair is generally disliked.
- Men generally feel that they could do a better job at body hair grooming but seem to feel they lack the information to do so themselves.
- Traditionally, skincare products and services have been aimed and marketed towards women ie. facials, dermaplaning, etc. But men can benefit from them too and are increasingly utilizing them.
What are your thoughts on body hair on men? Let us know in the comments below!