When The Going Gets Tufted

I'm not a very hairy guy -- except in the armpit area. I've seen articles recently saying men should shave their armpit hair. Really? Do women go for this, or (sorry!) do they maybe think you're gay?

--Fur Pits

Your body hair should not tell a story -- like that Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden actually aren't dead; they're hiding out in your armpits. Body hair removal for men has actually gone pretty mainstream. Psychologist Gareth Terry, in a 2016 paper exploring attitudes about male body hair removal, found that gay, straight, and bisexual men and women saw male body hair as masculine and "natural"...to a point -- the point at which they found it "excessive" and thus disgusting. For example, as one bisexual dude, 24, put it: "If you have a rug on your torso or back, then try not to display it in public." In the armpit hair arena, when psychologist Michael S. Boroughs surveyed 18-to-44-year-old American men, he found that 40 percent did some manscaping. Of these men, 62 percent just "reduced" the hair, and 38 percent removed it. (He didn't separate out sexual preference, but I would guess a good chunk of those balding their pits were gay men.) Sure, some women might be into the Mr. Gorilla Pits thing. But trimmed hair grows back. Disgust is hard to reverse. So grab an electric beard clipper. Prune the hair down to an inch or half-inch or so (making it look short and neat but not like you went to some armpit coiffure place). As a guideline, there's this: If you're taking a woman to a forested area, it should require a trip by car or at least on foot, not just lifting one of your arms.