January 10, 2006
Smooth Operators - From the NBA to the WB, straight men are shaving their body hair—even their pits!
What do you look for in a male professional athlete? Strength? Agility? Rakish good looks? A ripped physique?
Me, I look for shaved armpits. Not because that’s, ahem, my preference but because I’ve become oddly obsessed with the spectacle of pro athletes, particularly basketball players, whose depilation routines increasingly extend south of the neck.
Chests are one thing: We’re used to muscle-bound goombahs defuzzing to bring their pecs into greater relief. But armpits. Armpits! There are, far as I know, no underarm muscles whose greater glory necessitates deforestation.
Yet every time I watched a b-ball game last season, I spotted a few sets of hairless or lovingly trimmed underarms. NCAA rising star Carl English would smoothly swoop toward the net to reveal he’s . . . smooth down there. Spurs giant David Robinson, hoisting an arm in celebration just before his retirement, showed off five-o’clock shadow south of his triceps. Latrell Sprewell, reaching for the ball, would reveal that he’s prickly in more ways than one. (Naturally, I’m looking forward to the new season to find out what hair-removal tips other players have picked up over the summer.)
I started noticing all this thanks to the slow-motion-replay feature on TiVo: One day, I relived a spectacular rebound and discovered an NCAA player whose pits were more grammar-school than collegiate. (Amazing the peculiar little details TiVo slo-mo reveals; I can hardly wait for a TiVo-HDTV combo so I can obsess over sitcom stars’ plastic-surgery scars.) Once you notice one hairless hoopster, you notice them all—on TV, on the sports pages, in Sports Illustrated. They’re everywhere.
Of course, some athletes have always lived life on the (razor’s) edge: swimmers (who allegedly shave to cut down on drag) and cyclists (who shave so that leg scrapes can easily be bandaged for faster healing) and bodybuilders and professional wrestlers (who have always been just totally weird about their bodies). But basketball players—and football players (like Jeremy Shockey, who proudly shows off his noticeably sleek pits by hiking up his jersey sleeves)—define masculine norms in America. Where pro athletes in this country go, average men follow. And at the moment, pro athletes are straying into territory once occupied mainly by transvestites and pre-op transsexuals.
Read the rest of this article, written by Simon Dumenco and posted originally on NewYorkMetro.com.
[…] ** Truth is that this article is both applicable to men as well as women. More and more today are shaving their armpits for a variety of reasons including, looks good, helps reduce body odor, more comfortable, or a host of other reasons. Smooth Operators - From the NBA to the WB, straight men are shaving their body hair—even their pits! ** […]
I am glad people are going more public on men ridding their underarms of hair.I wanted to start in my teens;but was afraid it was unacceptable. Hopfuly writers will continue making this subject more mainstream.Until recently men were even embarresed to bring up the subject
[…] A very popular blog post - Smooth Operators - From the NBA to the WB, straight men are shaving their body hair—even their pits! Cat: […]
Great article, that was interesting
[…] Smooth Operators - From the NBA to the WB, straight men are shaving their body hair—even their pits! What do you look for in a male professional athlete? Strength? Agility? Rakish good looks? A ripped physique? […]
Absolutely!
Guys should shave their pits. Been doing mine for ten years and love it. Wear vests all the time.
Arms are f*****g gorgeous!