Manscaping
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Manscaping is a neologism that was brought into American homes in 1990 by Top Gun[citation needed]; portmanteau for "landscaping" the male body by shaving, trimming, waxing, or brushing the body hair.
Until the late 70's (the era of the mustache), it was considered a secret for American males to shave or otherwise remove hair below the neck. Some exceptions are bodybuilders, who would do so in order to make their muscular definition more visible, as well as swimmers who often shave body hair to improve their athletic performance, and cyclists, who often shave their legs to facilitate massage and treatment of accident injuries. Now over 75% of men (taken from a sampling of 4500 men in a GQ Magazine survey)claim that they have or continue to trim for either their girlfriends or wives. The same poll asked 4500 women if they preferred, didnt care , or were disgusted at the act of manscaping and found that over 87% preferred the act.
Towards the end of the 1990s, some American men, especially those in Generation X, began to remove their body hair, some claiming it made them feel "cleaner", others asserting that it made them feel cooler in warm weather. This trend has helped undermine the notion that male body hair removal is effeminate, much like long hair on the head of males regained acceptance for Westerners in the mid-1960s.
[edit] References in popular culture
- The front cover of the November, 1993 issue of Vanity Fair magazine featured Sylvester Stallone nude (but seated in such a manner so that the genitalia were not visible) and with a completely shaved body (at least in all of the areas that could be seen in the photo). The cover created controversy at the time, but probably due to the nudity rather than the lack of body hair (Stallone had previously appeared with a shaved body in some of the films he starred in, most notably Rambo: First Blood Part II).
- On an episode of Married with Children, the star Al Bundy is forced to have his armpit hair shaved for medical reasons. He laments this due to his not feeling it manly to do so.
- There is body hair removal in The 40-Year-Old Virgin involving Steve Carell.
- A similar scene was filmed in the location documentary for Jack Black's Nacho Libre Confessional, episode #3. Jack Black's character is based on Mexican wrestlers who are expected to be hairless.
- In the premiere episode of Amish in the City, teenagers from the city felt revulsion at the sight of a bare-chested Amish man and immediately shaved his chest.
- There is a deleted scene in the cartoon show American Dad!, where a character says: "Points for manscaping", after seeing the main character, Stan Smith, nude.[citation needed]
