Manscaping and After: Power, Parody and the Hairy Chest

Abstract

This article is concerned with the ways that contemporary ideas of crisis and struggle in relation to white, Western masculinity are expressed through the body, placing particular emphasis on the grooming of male body hair and of the chest, in particular. “Manscaping,” made mainstream in the early 2000s, was promoted in men’s magazines and newspapers, which encouraged men to groom their chest hair in the name of personal pride and hygiene. This article will explore how, in response to these fashionable cycles, deeper issues of masculine identity are being contested through the bodies of men in a variety of media. It will settle on an analysis of the way that chest hair and manscaping have converged in online activities, which display chest hair shaped in ironic ways. It will argue that this is a form of parody and resistance that can be connected to a volatile political landscape and uses Sally Robinson’s notion of the “wounded body” (2005: 6) to argue that this is a reactionary move intended to maintain masculine dominance by making a visible refusal to adhere to the complex demands made by fashions in male chest hair.

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