Manscape Architecture

Ah, if only life were that easy. “I am, generally speaking, not a fan of the over-coiffed male,” says Elaine, a 40-year-old happily married mother of two. “There’s something very over-concerned about it that’s not particularly masculine.”

Damn it! I was just about to break out my brand new Gillette Sextuple Blades of Glory razor and some skin soothing tropical rain shave gel and get down to some serious weed whacking. I was sort of under the impression that denuding my delicates would come off as confident, comfortable with my instrument. You know, like an R-rated version of those popular Old Spice commercials:

Good evening, ladies, I hope all is well. It is? Fantastic. Look at my eyes, now look at my cock. Back to my eyes. No, you weren’t imagining things. I am bare and beautiful! And appear a bit bigger, don’t you think? I shaved it myself while planting a rose garden. Would you like some roses? Here are a dozen. Sure, look at my cock again. Help yourself. I am proud to stand at your attention unabashed and absent of the typical thicket that so often compromises my complete lack of modesty. Now back to my eyes.

Giving off an I’m-overly-concerned-about-my-pubes vibe, though, is no good, and there does seem to be a consensus that a fully clean full frontal really isn’t all that appealing.

Rex, a 36-year-old father of three, says, “I can tell you what my wife doesn’t like: completely shaved. We have two prepubescent boys, and reminding her of our sons by coming to bed without any garnish on the plate is about as effective an aphrodisiac as a bucket of ice water.”

Elaine is mom to two girls, and while she does admit that she appreciates “any covert and/or considerate efforts to keep body hair from sticking to my tonsils in compromising situations,” she also finds a smoothed-over schlong disheartening. “A hairless penis looks … well, sad, quite frankly.”

This melancholy situation is exacerbated for guys who register somewhere on the furrier side of the mammalian evolutionary chart. True to his nickname, Hairy has a full complement of chest and back growth that he proudly refuses to take down. “If I were to trim everything around my dick, it wouldn’t match the rest of me,” he says.

What then? What’s the strategy for kindly eliminating the risk that your partner will return from an otherwise successful oral mission with teeth full of stragglers as if he or she went down on Chewbacca without transforming your genitals into an enigmatic island of freaky hairlessness on an otherwise hirsute body?

Thirty-two years old and married, Fenix has one possible answer. “I try to keep it at a ‘I wanna be bad, but not bad enough that I have to pray about it’ length,” he says. For him, that means firing up a beard trimmer (purchased specifically for this task) once a week. “I tend to maintain consistency, and not let it get too squirrelly.”

A beard trimmer or set of clippers with a blade guard is great because you can work to blend your controlled xeriscaping efforts into the surrounding natural environment. However, one minor dilemma remains: Where do you stop?

“It’s the biggest struggle I have,” Rex says. “Do I trim a little bit of the thigh hair as well? How far up the torso should I go? I’m still experimenting with that.”

Me, too, actually. At Susan’s request, I’ve started keeping things a bit more high and tight below the belt. She finds it visually alluring—borderline irresistible, actually (so what was I going to do?). Similar to Hairy, though, I am not lacking when it comes to body fuzz, and one of the first times I trimmed up, Susan politely suggested I go back and get a little more aggressive with the clippers.

Forty-five minutes later, I walked out of the bathroom with what looked like a reverse Speedo. I had become so caught up in the clean-up effort that I had totally forsaken any attempt to blend. Each swath removed led to another that seemingly needed to go. The end result was a totally unnatural ruler-straight line of hair running across my waist about two inches below my belly button and oddly smooth upper thighs.

Chalk that experimentation up to failure, and keep this little nugget in mind the next time you decide to manscape: As unbecoming as a Speedo might be at your local pool, a reverse hair Speedo in the bedroom is much worse.

It’s only hair, of course, so you really don’t have anything to lose. And it always grows. But until it does, Look at my eyes, now look at my … actually, stay with my eyes.