Is Having Chest Hair a Style Faux Pas?

 

Photo by PR Photos

Are hairless bodies the new aesthetic for today's men? 

The Daily Mail recently wrote about the growing shaving/waxing/primping trend among men in search of the perfect hairless chest. The new 'hairless chic' has been underway for some time, and is inspired by a growing number of bare-chested male celebrities - from Matthew McConaughey to David Beckham. Long gone are the days when a full chest of hair - a la Sean Connery, Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds - was the ideal to live up to.

Not everyone feels this way, of course. A number of hair restoration surgeons, including myself, occasionally perform body hair transplants - in most cases, this procedure takes hair from the chest, arms or wherever and transplants it into the scalp because the patient doesn't have enough donor hair at the back of the head. However, sometimes the procedure is reversed - and the transplant is for the chest, or beard or pubic region, to create hair. 

Slate previously wrote about the history of body hair removal and there's also a discussion on HowStuffWorks about why we have body hair to begin with. Meanwhile, the global dairy company Arla apparently didn't get the memo about body hair - it's British subsidiary recently created an actual coat made from the chest hair of 300 male donors, as a publicity stunt to promote a new protein beverage.