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“Nice wig Janice, what’s it manufactured from?”…“Your mum’s chest hair!” This iconic one-liner (from the now-canonical 2004 film, Mean Girls) is indicative of just how far chest hair, be it your mum’s or your individual, is loaded with cultural connotation.  In terms of body hair, a sort of ‘all or nothing’ politics abounds and chest hair is not any different. In fact, there was a time when humans were completely covered in body hair but, as our ape-adjacent ancestors migrated to warmer climes, and eventually indoors, we began to shed this coating through a technique of natural selection. Over time, any body hair that did remain became encoded in deep sociocultural associations.  Due to chest hair’s correlation to higher levels of testosterone,...

From ‘sexy’ on ‘Marlboro Man’ Tom Selleck within the Eighties to ‘subversive’ at Art School’s AW20 show “Nice wig Janice, what’s it made from?”…“Your mum’s chest hair!” This iconic one-liner (from the now-canonical 2004 film, Mean Girls) is indicative of just how far chest hair, be it your mum’s or your individual, is loaded with cultural connotation.  Relating to body hair, a type of ‘all or nothing’ politics abounds and chest hair is not any different. In fact, there was a time when humans were completely covered in body hair but, as our ape-adjacent ancestors migrated to warmer climes, and eventually indoors, we began to shed this coating through a technique of natural selection....