![Pat Cash credit Holly Revell]( "Pat Cash credit Holly Revell")
I have a pretty hairy body, naturally. Not like Planet of the Apes-level but a fair amount of fine, dark hair from my Irish heritage grows across my chest, narrowing into a healthy ‘treasure trail’ down my navel. Between my pectorals the hair concentrates and grows in a particularly thick patch.
By Patrick Cash
When I used to go out clubbing every weekend, I’d shave my chest hair. It was time-consuming and arduous, but I wanted to heighten my powers of attraction to a Shard-like pinnacle, to get a look of lust from every guy in that club.
You see, when I was 22 (I’m 28 now) and not long on the scene, I’d had my top off, dancing drunkenly in a club when a cute DJ had rocked up. I smiled. He smiled. He said: ‘Nice.’
I felt great: valued and attractive. Then he ran the back of his fingers through my chest hair.
‘Apart from this.’
Combined with working in a gay bar at the time that worshipped smooth-skinned gay twink beauty, it was out with the Mach 3, mirror and lather.
Yet recently, at this big club night full of a million beautiful, wide-eyed Ken dolls, I was inebriated, horny and hadn’t shaved. Ah fuck it, I thought, maybe it’s all in my head. I whipped off my top and had a wander.
People dropped their drinks with shock; a meph dealer passed out on the spot; a fag hag threw herself screaming from the top balcony. Nobody missed her. I saw a guy I’d slept with before – I hardly had to walk far – dancing away with his smooth, muscled torso and I said hello.
His grin faded in exact time to the motion of his eyes as they gazed slowly down my bare body.
‘I didn’t know you had –‘ and he rubbed his fingers in an exact echo of the way that DJ had before ‘– this.’
Did I just have particularly disgusting chest hair? I’d never had any complaints from ex-boyfriends or shags I’d slept with when unshaved. It only seemed to happen when out in clubs. I wondered if there might be some quick reflection of what the gay scene finds attractive that I could flick through, to find out if the scene really hates on the hair.
“The pedestal of perfection is cut clear: smooth, ripped, bronzed, youthful, chiselled.”
Oh, yeah there is: it’s called QX.
Actually, on last week’s cover the model did have a healthy smattering of follicles. Other than that, of all the thousand topless torsos in photos, hairy chests only appear to exist at bear clubs (a given), on a safe sex advert and as an extra in Bathhouse: the Musical. But does the gay media influence or stream the gay thinking on attraction? I needed a second, authoritative source to make this investigation scientific.
So I opened Grindr.
Here, in the pulsing foreskin of heady Soho on a Friday afternoon, all the boys were lubing up for the weekend. Plenty of rock-abbed bare chests were holding iPhones in front of gym mirrors. I counted 12 smooth torsos before a lone hair ranger dared expose his stubbly shamelessness to all.
![]( "Patrick Cash by Holly Revell")
I began to consider the real reason why I shaved my chest. It wasn’t for my own happiness. But it conformed to the expectations of gay, male beauty we handcuff upon each other, and wrap in weight-lifting gloves. I’m completely a part of this fairground hall of warped mirrors – it’s not like I work out to ward off heart disease.
‘Research shows that gay men tend to take care of their bodies more than straight men,’ writes Brandon Ambrosino in his excellent Atlantic essay ‘The Tyranny of Buffness’. ‘But the same research shows gay men are motivated less by the desire to be healthy, and more ‘for the express purpose of increasing attractiveness.’’ The pedestal of perfection is cut clear: smooth, ripped, bronzed, youthful, chiselled.
Ambrosino quotes the research of Dr Duane Brennan: ‘Brennan, a gay man himself, insists gay culture’s preference for a specific physical ideal does indeed affect those who fall short of the prevailing standards. Some of these negative effects include low self-esteem, eating disorders, and body dysmorphia. Brennan also says some gay men who don’t measure up might even develop ‘an increased use or dependency’ on drugs and alcohol.’
Brennan’s obviously been big on the dance floors of muscle clubs in London where everybody is strangely sober and nobody’s nostril is ringed with white powder. But body-obsession is like Tantalus, the king in Greek mythology, who was punished by being placed starving in a pool with fruit above his head, forever just outside his fingers’ reach. However much you shave, wax, bench press, bleach or tan, if it’s only for validation in other people’s eyes, you’re never going to reach a pedestal of personal happiness.
Even as I research and shape these theories I can hear the sex devil’s voice dismissing them in my mind. I naturally enjoy being active and keeping fit, why shouldn’t I reap the aesthetic rewards that arrive with that? We do have innate impulses of sexual attraction, and for most of us it leans towards the leaner physique.
Perhaps because when body fascism passes a certain point, it’s no longer about attraction but acceptance. We’re sinking claws into each other’s flesh, like the tarantula fangs of beauty clinics who prey on gay men, hoping to find a boil of insecurity they can squeeze until it jizzes the puss of pound signs all over their salivating faces.
“However much you shave, wax, bench press, bleach or tan, if it’s only for validation in other people’s eyes, you’re never going to reach a pedestal of personal happiness.”
Is this really what we want from our culture? ‘Hi, I’m an eyebrow-plucked, anally-bleached H&M mannequin who totally worships Regina George in a totally non-ironic way because I believe her moronic cruelty is fierce and ‘you can’t sit with us’ unless you look the same.’
But actually we have nothing to say to one another, so we’re just going to sit here sending dick pics to each other on Grindr to give us another extra, vacuous sense of judgement and control like a shallow layer of oil rippling over the raging waters of what’s going wrong inside. What’ll happen later? Dunno, maybe we’ll go under on G, because however much we obsess about our bodies as shells, we don’t take care for them as homes for our souls.
We’re allowed to say we’re unhappy with the way things are. We don’t have to stop going to the gym, or throw ourselves mouth-first into a swimming pool full of Haribo, and we don’t have to ‘let ourselves go’. Unless letting ourselves go means just relaxing in the company of good friends who don’t care how we look, because those warm bonds are forged on how it feels to be around us.
I look back at the best sex I’ve had in the past decade. I’ve had some good sex with guys who look like the physical ideal, but I’ve also had some terrible sex: like I’m having sex with a beautiful shadow. Somebody who’s not quite real: because when you’re tearing away all that’s natural about you, you’re paint-stripping away your truth inside.
I’m not going to state here that I’m never going to shave my chest again, like the suffragettes and their armpits. Maybe I’m not strong enough to stand alone on the rocks against the pounding waves of what my scene demands from me. I want to be accepted. But I can begin the dialogue of how one day we can find a greater acceptance in a greater truth.
Photo by Holly Revell
• ‘Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs – Truth’ is on Thursday 9th April at Ku Klub, 30 Lisle Street, Chinatown, WC2H 7BA from 6.30pm. More info here: www.facebook.com/events/1544692712461292/
• An open-mic forum for anybody to come talk about how they perceive these issues in the gay male community.
• A recent PACE report into LGBT mental health cites body image issues amongst gay/bi men a leading concern: 60.9% are not satisfied with physical fitness, 61.7% unsatisfied with body fat and 58.1% unsatisfied with muscularity.
• Find out more about the RaRE report at www.pacehealth.org.uk
