The Future of Chesty McCheesecakes

Is this bad news for the president?

Thanks to Max for pointing out that chest hair may be making a comeback!

At least, over at Salon Tracy Clark-Flory is defending the hirsute and for that I say hurrah! Let the men look like men, says I!

I see a man with hair on his chest and I think (or rather feel, because this is where my rational, feminist brain checks out): You man, me Jane. It’s not that hairiness necessarily makes a man more attractive — please, no one run out for pectoral hair plugs — it’s that natural is sexy, and unvarnished maleness is incredibly erotic. To me, excessive hair removal signals an insecurity and uneasiness with our wild, primal selves. It’s anesthetized masculinity and lust — the total opposite of sensual.

The truth is that the male body in general gets a bad rap.

I agree with that, and I wonder about it.

I mean, in the end, it’s not really important — and yes, we are a society that is actually sick in our toxic obsession with the physical and the material — but there is a social consideration, here. Have clean chests been favored, recently, because our culture has become over-feminized or because it is under-matured?

That’s a good question. Our social behavior (and our values) seem to be suggest a devolving away from maturity and toward a collective case of arrested development that has all age-groups exhibiting the entertainment sensibilities, critical-thinking skills and moral giddiness of 14 year-olds.

Perhaps in a perpetually adolescent culture, we are less inclined to be comfortable with this…

…and more comfortable with this?

Does it all have to do with simply being products of our time?

When I was young, I had my posters of the clean-chested Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy up on the wall; I imagine hairless chests are non-threatening, in some way, at least to a 10 year old.

Later on, though, that Magnum picture looked pretty all-right to me. But I think in the end, I concur with Clark-Flory: just be natural. If you have chest hair, be okay with it. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. No plugs, please, and no waxing! The world would be a much healthier, happier place if we humans could climb down from each other’s backs about looks or possessions, that might help us to get off our own insecure backs a bit, too!

What about you, readers? No more Chesty McCheesecakes? What are your theories on why the clean-chested men have been in favor for so long?

Related:
Bush Creepy; Obama a Godling