Hairy Men Are Hot Too
By: Liam Campbell
Tags: Gay, Queer, LGBTQ, Body Positive, Body Image

Have you seen the animated show ‘Big Mouth’? It’s basically a puberty sitcom, if I can refer to that as a genre, and in the opening credits there’s this scene of a boy’s armpits sprouting thick wiry hairs that morph into a literal forest. I always cringe when I see that scene, not because I don’t like hairy armpits, but because it reminds me of a traumatic moment from my own puberty.

I was twelve years old, maybe thirteen at most, and was sat on a sofa at my grandparents’ house for some holiday, Easter perhaps. My Aunt Cindy noticed a bit of hair under my arms peeking out from my t-shirt sleeve. Soon she’d told everyone — all the women in the family were fussing to have a look, and my dozen cousins were teasing the hell out of me. I never noticed the hair until that moment, and I was not keen on being the centre of attention for it.

An outtake of Florent F, from our ‘Elska 20 (Lyon, France)’ issue

Somehow I didn’t let the momentary trauma influence me. I went on to grow more hair in more places and never felt the need to shave it, even after I noticed how all the ‘hot boys’ tended to be hairless. So what if I couldn’t be a hot boy like them? I still got enough action and nobody complained apart from an occasional hair getting stuck in a mouth!

Catching the sunset on the shores of the Mediterranean with Aviv S, from our ‘Elska 14 (Haifa, Israel)’ issue

Last week a reader wrote in to us to say that Elska helped him rethink his attitudes toward his body, in particular to his body hair. He mentioned that it was almost impossible to find gay porn that included hairier men, but that seeing some in Elska was a reassurance that hairy men are hot too. He said he's found a confidence to embrace his natural attributes, and has decided to finally let his body hair grow back. It’s an amazing thing to hear, and if Elska played even a tiny role in it, this helps convince me to keep making this publication. I'm also looking forward to some before-and-after snaps of this reader!

An image of Iván D, from our ‘Elska 24 (Guadalajara, Mexico)’ issue

If you’re old enough to remember the pre-Grindr days, then you’ll recall meeting a guy at a bar or club, when you’d decide in person if you liked each other . There was no swiping left or right before saying hello, and nobody was swapping nudes. If you were lucky enough to hit it off and go home together, the surprise of finally seeing his naked body was all part of the fun. Would he have a hairy or a smooth chest? Would he be cut or uncut? Would he have a cute knob poking out of a grassy field or would he have some little sea monster beached onto a smooth rocky shore? If you’d already gotten that far, you had to deal with whatever you found. After all, our differences are all part of the excitement of a first sexual encounter, though frankly a totally shaven haven always freaked me out a bit — as per the old saying, “If there’s grass on the wicket, let’s play cricket!”

An image of Miguel G, the rugger bugger known as ‘Chewbacca’ from our ‘Elska 12 (Brussels, Belgium)’ issue

I remember the first time the idea of hairiness as being something undesirable came up during an Elska shoot. It was with a chap called Sasha K from our debut ‘Elska 01 (Lviv, Ukraine)’ issue. He was hesitant whether to do the nude part of the shoot or not, worried that he’d not trimmed at all and thought it might be a problem. I told our assistant Andriy to tell him in Ukrainian that “hairy pubes are trendy in London now” and it was enough to give him the confidence to strip off. Result!

Yes, you actually can see the tree for the forest with Sasha, though the uncropped evidence is in our ‘Elska 01 (Lviv, Ukraine)’ issue

This idea of pubes being trendy in Britain was of course a fib. But I do hope it catches on there or somewhere. Or rather, I hope that natural bodies become more desirable generally. Let’s be real — sex is fun, and if you put limits all over your lust then you’re simply limiting your pool of carnal possibilities. So get over your prejudices and let’s enjoy each other and our bodies!

Liam Campbell is editor and chief photographer of Elska Magazine, a publication full of all sorts of dudes, including hairy ones, non-hairy ones, and a lot of imperfect gorgeousness.