Beauty Behind Closed Doors: Body Hair Contouring Is The Biggest Unspoken Grooming Practice
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Like all trends, what men do with their body hair changes with the times. In the seventies, hairy kings Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck were the masculine ideal; in the nineties, the beaches were packed with boy band-smooth torsos. Now, body hair trends fall somewhere in the middle, though more men than you’d like do some sort of body hair maintenance. What is new in 2022 is not so much the amount of body hair that’s desired, it’s the technique.
These days it’s not about being smooth from head to toe, says aesthetician Gabriel Suarez, founder of Smooth Cheeks in Los Angeles, CA and who works nearly exclusively on men. His clients ask for a natural look with hair carefully trimmed or removed in specific places to accentuate and enhance their natural assets. “Men of all walks of life usually want their butt and back smooth,” he says, “but they still like to have hair, just more maintained, on the chest and stomach.”
In recent years, the demographics of the men seeking out his services has “drastically changed,” he says. “When I started 14 years ago, it was mostly gay men over 55. Now I have 21 year old straight men. It’s all over the board.” The one common thread is that they all care about how they look. “These men keep their cars tidy, their homes tidy, and they also want their bodies to look tidy.”
The biggest reason Suarez’s clients seek him out, and the key to a natural body hair look, is a contouring technique that accentuates muscle definition, particularly on the torso. It’s similar to how your barber fades the sides of your head, he says. “Going shorter shows definition,” he advises, which is why he typically fades hair shorter as it goes out to the edges of the stomach and chest. He typically leaves hair longer on the chest than the stomach. The overall effect is “natural, contoured and aesthetically pleasing,” he says (versus one length all over which looks, well, trimmed).
The best way to achieve the look is, of course, visiting a professional like Suarez. But he says there are some techniques you can do yourself to get there as well. First, apply a cornstarch based baby powder (like Burt’s Bees Baby Dusting Powder) to the area you’re going to trim to help keep it dry and puff the hair up, making it easier to cut. Then, trim everything to the longest length you’d want before gradually decreasing the guards as you move to the edge of your body. “It’s like cutting grass—cut it all one length then do the edges,” he says. Go shorter around the nipples and inside hills and valleys (like your abs and under your pecs) where hair can appear longer than it actually is. Then, if there are any areas you want completely shaved, use an electric razor to finish those off (he recommends the Philips Norelco Bodygroom Trimmer and Shaver because it has a shaver built in). Finally, it might make cleanup easier, but don’t trim in the shower - hair is harder to trim when it’s wet.
Thanks to these contouring techniques, all you need to get beach ready this year could be a body hair trimmer. But if you’re expecting to inspect other guys’ grooming jobs during shirtless season it may be hard—if they’re doing it right, or seeing a professional, you won’t be able to tell they trim at all.
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