Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry shaves off his chest hair only to have Kramer wig out and explain to him that once you shave your chest hair it will come back bigger and badder than ever?  According to this article which debunks seven common medical myths that whole hair shaving theory is a bunch of bull.  As is the commonly held belief that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day.  Ends up you get most of the fluid you need through what you regularly eat and drink.  Yep, even that juice in your steak counts as do those eight cups of coffee you drink in the morning.

By the way that Seinfeld episode is probably responsible for the delay of the male shaving practice that has become so common today.  I think we would have seen men lazing off their hair in much greater numbers before 2000 if it weren’t for Seinfeld.  Remember the 90s were all about men becoming, well, less manly and the trend of hairless men becoming the ideal seemed to be well on its way until that infamous Seinfeld episode in ’97.  But Seinfeld is long gone and so is any question about what boys think girls want in their men.  These days you’ll have to search far and wide to find a picture of a man with more than token chest hair in a magazine or movie.  The days when Bond was an average built guy  with a hairy chest cooly smoking a Camel (Sean Connery) have been replaced by the days when Bond is a hairless, six-packed fitness freak (Daniel Craig).  Gone too are the days when men reveled in their hairy chests and solid beer bellies.  Don’t get me wrong, we still have them, but now we feel like we have to hide them or maybe even feel a little guilt for not hitting the gym.  I have the feeling that the real men who built this country are turning in their graves.

For the record I’m the owner of prodigious amounts of body hair and a burgeoning beer belly.  A man born way behind his times I am.