The Scene: It's past midnight. I'm tired. I'm drinking strawberry-flavored bottled water ("Fruit2-O" [sigh] You’d think I owned a Maltese), and my mind is hyper-analyzing a certain thought. And now I'm sitting at my computer. This could get ugly.
Which is exactly my point: ugly. Unattractive. Undateable. Me.
Don't roll your eyes, yet: I'm in a happy, contented mood right now. I just want to share some thoughts that are not new to me, but coalesced while I was in the shower just a little while ago.
There is something about me that very few people know, something that has certainly damaged my prospects of dating. It continues to do so. Given what I’ve heard from the women I’ve known, whether close friends or mere acquaintances, this is even more serious, more of a
deal-breaker, than my past experiences as a homosexual. It’s not VD, HIV, a parole officer, or children. “Well, what could it be?” you ask. I’ll tell you.
I have back hair.Yup, I’m outed. I'm hirsute.
Before you start protesting that “It’s not that big of a deal”, check yourself. Seriously. Don’t even start to act pious. What was your immediate reaction to my even saying it? Probably the same reaction I’ve heard come out of
every woman’s mouth (except my mother’s) when the topic was even broached by someone in conversation: “Eeeww! That’s gross!”
And even if you think it’s OK in the abstract, you probably have never considered whether you would date a man with back hair. If you have, you’ve probably put it in the category of goiters, extreme body warts, or dwarfism: something you’d put up with if you had to if he had other qualities in spades, like a shit-ton of money. [I’d mention Celine Dion as an example here, but she’s Canadian.]
In one sense, this situation is analogous to the locker-room truth I learned as a teenager: “Girls either have big breasts and big butts, or small breasts and small butts.” So women, if you like a man with hairy chest and/or hairy legs, consider the whole package. And if you loathe men with body hair, go date a teenager. [No offense meant to my good friends with little to no body hair: I’m just making a point. Consider yourself outrageously dateable.]
How did back hair become so offensive?
Maybe I’ll marry a European or Mediterranean woman who wouldn’t care. Or maybe I’ll marry a woman who has special compassion for people with physical deformities. But seriously, I wouldn’t be thinking in these terms had I had even
one interaction with an American woman in the past 20 years who didn’t show outright revulsion at the thought.
But I’ve watched many of them nearly backpedal themselves to death when they expressed their negative reaction and then realized that I was a target of their disgust.
At this point, you would be right to point out that I experienced a great deal of body image pressure from the homosexual community. True. But the Abercrombie & Fitch/Calvin Klein ideal of male beauty is not limited to the homosexual community. It has flourished in the mainstream, and that probably includes you.
In a strange way, BH offers me protection. It is like having a bottle of (if I may use the term) “Fag Repellent”. Nothing would make a gay man run faster, and that’s a good thing for me. Many gay men would prefer to date someone HIV+ than a man with back hair. I’m not kidding.
I’m just tired of hearing people say that I’m disgusting. That there are things about me that are a deal-breaker. That there is something about me that is totally gross.
Then again, I could be wrong.
