Some Men Shave Their Legs but We Are All Going to Be Okay

Grab your exorcism kits, fellow women: some sort of terrible deamon has found its way into the heart of at least five British men, who are now shaving their legs because they think it looks nice and feels nice and is a pretty okay thing to do.

This is according to a fairly baffled Daily Mail article that was very clearly composed with a thesaurus.com tab open to “legs” (“limbs”… “pins”… “walking-bones encased in meat sacs”?). This investigation finds a surprising uptick in the amount of male humans looking to banish the hair from their long strolly-bits, which the author labels as a “troubling trend.” Says Ray Khandpur, who works at a male grooming salon:

‘We get about 15 or 20 men a month coming in to have their legs waxed or lasered. The modern man in general is a lot more body conscious. Men are taking better care of themselves and are turning to treatments once only taken up by women – and why not?’

Seriously, why not? Granted, this is the Daily Mail — however, the topic of male leg-shaving has inspired Reddit threads, Buzzfeed articles, and (of course) several Yahoo! Answers boards. Why should it be so endlessly puzzling? As one leg-shaver implies, we can’t all we Tom Selleck — because this is earth and not heaven where everyone is Tom Selleck (also in heaven all dogs turn into the baby from Three Men and a Baby). Says not-Selleck, “My chest hairs are blond and wiry and my leg hairs are orange. I think it looks untidy and makes me look unkempt, so I prefer to shave it all off.”

Yet another man who removes the hair from his foot-stalks claims that he and his mates even talk about hair removal in the pub, and no one murders them for it. A third notes that no women vomit and die immediately when in the presence of his hairlessness. This is all very shocking.

Really, though, who cares what you decide to do with your own body hair? If some men prefer not to look like Mr. Tumnus in shorts, more power to them. If others like to keep the fur upon their meat-capris, that’s great too. Whatever makes you happy, esteemed sirs! Policing someone’s grooming habits according to some sort of made-up gender performance criteria is always a big, reductive waste of time — no matter how unaccustomed to a certain practice we are as a culture.

In closing, one time this very photogenic alt girl in high school told me that her boyfriend shaved his legs before prom and having sex with him afterwards was “like fucking a seal,” which is a glowing endorsement if ever there was one.

“Men who shave their legs — first they stole our moisturizer, and now there’s a more troubling trend” [Daily Mail]