h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was sitting and looking at a book of Michelangelo's works the other day. This included a lot of marble statues, which naturally are rather hairless. It made me think of the trend of getting rid of all of your body hair, that some men follow these days. Women have of course been doing it for a while. What are people's opinions on this? Is it a silly thing? Does it make us seem less simian? More childish?

Marble sculptures don't have hair anyway. It would look silly if an artist was so into verisimilitude that he/she pasted hairs onto the marble.

As for the hair on anyone's body, a lot will depend on how much hair is there. You mentioned the current hair-removal trend among men. I've noticed that a fair number of Afro-American men shave the hair from their heads. Perhaps many of them had served in the U.S. marine Corps, where *everyone* gets a shaved head on the assumption that training (or actual fighting) in the mud presents sanitary problems for anyone with hair.

Some men lose some or all of the hair on their heads beginning in their twenties. Others don't. I don't think I know any men over 40 who go around with bald heads if they don't need to. If hair will grow on their heads, they encourage it do so until a barber's visit is indicated.

As for body hair, there's a lot of variation. Some men have a lot of hair on their bodies, some have a little, and some have hardly any. The ones with hardly any don't need to remove the little that they have. The only time I notice whether men have a lot of hair on their chests is when I'm sharing a locker room or beach with them. If they seem very hairy, it's obvious that they aren't doing anything to remove the hair. As for the others, I'm not into quizzing them about their attitude toward hair. What would they think of me for asking?

I find the completely shaved look to be pretty creepy, especially when it includes genitalia - as you say Xan, it makes them look childish and when we're talking about cock and balls, that's just wrong.

I've read commentaries that say the popularisation/fetishisation of the youthful, hairless look was basically a reaction to the AIDS crisis: gay men harking back to innocence, youth and virility instead the sick stereotype that developed, but I'm inclined to view anyone above a certain age (i.e. mid-twenties, early thirties at the absolute latest) who's got a thing for twinks with deep suspicion.

I like my blokes hairy, but that's to be expected since I identify as a cub/bear but I'm happy with regularly hairy blokes. Hair on top the head is a bit of an irrelevance to me - don't care one way or the other. At 27 my hair still grows at a rate of knots and I've not had a grey hair yet so I may be one of those who keeps most of their hair until late in life.

The hairless woman myth is very oppressive. I've been through different stages about it in terms of my desire. I'm into it now again.

For hundreds of years all those paintings of the perfect woman with no hair other than on the head would have gone deep into our consciouness.

I think it can be a fun thing to shave for both sexes though...but if its like this rigid thing of what you should do its a pain.

I mean I'm into hair again on women. That post wasn't very clear.

Where on a woman?

Wherever it grows on her... Anywhere in my experience of an all girls school..and a few relationships with women.

It's animal.

Everyone has body hair. Trying to pretend otherwise is like pretending not to have toenails.

Michaelangelo's marble sculptures don't lack hair because they are marble - haven't you ever seen all those marble carvings of Greek philosophers with phenomenal beards?

No, they don't have hair because Michaelangelo essentially tried to capture freakish traits of humanity which he considered to be physical perfection. He wasn't going for naturalism.

I didn't really count hair on the head in this. A mass of hair such as a beard, would be easier to carve than individual hairs on the arms.

I've never seen anyone carving *individual hairs* on any part of the body, even on something as easy to work as clay. What they can do is give an impression of shape, texture and form, though. My point, though, was just that Michaelangelo wasn't trying to portray real humans - he was colouring superhero comics.

Either way, I think we can agree that they didn't give marble statues body hair for practical reasons. The look of them just made me think of this issue though.

My point was that when they wanted to, they could. And did.

What ever are you all talking about?


Body hair has been regularly depicted in sculpture, marble and otherwise, for centuries.

http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/statue5.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/statue4.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/statue3.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/statue1.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ArnoBrekerScupture5.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ArnoBrekerScupture7.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/statue16.jpg
http://enlightenedmale2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Ron-Mueck_6.jpg


and on and on.

This particular fact was pretty clear to me even before taking my freshman art history course as a teenager. Hairless nudes have been an occasional fashion and sometimes a personal artistic quirk.

Even good old David has pubes, for goodness sake: http://vlsi.colorado.edu/~rbloem/photos/david_full_front.gif


And check out this hairy fellow in bronze: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/188843/10338310/in/album/230246

Head hair, body hair, pubic hair. Do people not see a distinction? In any case, I just mentioned marble statues because they prompted this line of thinking. Not because I wanted to talk about marble statues.

I live *on a beach. There's not much body hair to be honest.

What *is* the distinction, actually? Serious question.

The difference between head hair and pubic hair is either where it is, or when it grows (puberty). Now, depending on whether you go by the "where" or the "when", a beard could be classed along with "pubic hair" (if you go by when it grows) or "head hair" (if you go by where it grows). But they're all "body hair".

Why not make an arbitrary distinction between hair on your knuckles and hair on the back of your hand? Manual hair and dexteral hair perhaps.

Was that a Anhaga?

There's also potential distinctions of texture independent of the where and when questions. Pubic hair and beard hair are of similar texture, but chest hair and head hair are similar (in my experience).


Personally, I think the current fad of hairlessness is about a pathological attraction to the infantile.

And it's more than a little disturbing.

Yes, KB, it was.

Anhaga, none of those showed any chest, arm or leg hair (except for the satyr, who - by definition - isn't a human!)

Lets talk about the most commonly shaved areas for women - underarm and legs. Why do we do this? And why don't we see underarm and leg hair in art (marble statue or otherwise)? And does the modern hairless man trend include these areas?