Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. I’m British, divorced, ginger-haired and I once accidentally called the late Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale ‘mum’ during an interview. So there’s very little I can learn about embarrassment.
Or so I thought. My perspective changed somewhere around the moment that a male groomer versed in the nascent trend of the ‘boyzilian’ placed hot wax over my most intimate areas and told me, in the nonchalant manner of a butcher asking me how I’d like my sausages bagged, that I should prepare for a certain amount of pain.
A certain amount of pain? I have always considered my discomfort threshold to be somewhere between an aged poodle with lumbar ache and a toddler playing with a freshly singed match. So perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised when I tell you that getting every hair on my chest, perineum, scrotum, buttocks, anus and pubic bone removed is never going to compare with a glass of chablis on a French beach at sunset when it comes to congenial personal experiences.
Perhaps it’s a throwback to the era of Greek and Roman antiquity where, as statues of Caesar and Fauno Barberini et al depict, hirsuteness on a man was considered the nemesis of poor grooming
But my ‘waxers’ Vaishaliben and Ashlie are not interested in my plaintive calls for sedatives, gin or a hammer to knock me unconscious. ‘You have very fine hair Rob, which is unusual for blonde and ginger people,’ says Ashlie, a man who has been waxing men’s most vital areas for more than five years.
He and his business partner Vaishaliben own Vaisu Beauty in Soho, a place where men’s most exacting contemporary waxing needs are taken care of. This includes the ‘boyzilian’ treatment. Depending on the length of your historical perspective, this ‘manscaping’ is either the ultimate male sacrifice to the goals set by the glistening, hairless gammon slabs otherwise known as The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea characters. Or it’s merely a throwback to the era of Greek and Roman antiquity where, as statues of Caesar and Fauno Barberini et al depict, hirsuteness on a man was also considered the nemesis of poor grooming.
It was, inevitably, David Beckham who became the first high-profile celebrity to have a ‘boyzilian’, putting this rather irritating neologism into the lexicon back in 2008. Prior to that, this male grooming equivalent of the total eclipse of the moon was almost exclusively the preserve of the gay community in the UK. But now, Ashlie says: ‘More and more men are coming to us to get a full boyzilian before their holiday. And I promise you that, these days, the majority of them are heterosexual.’
Since Becks got his golden balls tidied up, many celebs have made their pubic life part of their public life. Olympian Tom Daley is the new face (and many other body parts) of Gillette’s freshly launched ad campaign for their intimate male grooming kits. A spokesman for the brand claimed: ‘More and more guys across the UK are grooming their intimate area, but until now Gillette didn’t offer products with purpose-built features for such a sensitive and complex job.’
I’m not quite old enough to have had chest hair in the 1970s, an era when I was barely on solid food. But I’m of a vintage to be certain that male grooming was once an infinitely less painful, more plentiful affair. To have a filigree of chest hair climbing out of your polyester shirt was as essential for the 1970s male sex symbol as beige turtlenecks and bath taps that dispensed Old Spice and brandy Alexanders. Having copious chest hair (and presumably a veritable Art Garfunkel around the nether regions) didn’t do Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds any harm with the opposite sex. So what changed?
Some surveys suggest that this American tide of anti-hirsuteness got to European shores before reaching our climes. The online retailer Galaxies found that in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy, body hair grooming was standard procedure for two in every three men they spoke to, while nearly 40 per cent of men disliked the au naturel look favoured by the Bee Gees in their prime.
But what you really want to know is how much it hurts. Let me be brutally honest. Firstly, the strip wax method was used on all parts of my body except my (no longer strictly) private parts.
Vaishaliben sprinkles powder on me to dry out the perspiration induced by my imminent trauma, then smears mint green-coloured tea tree wax over my chest and arms before applying a white strip. She counts, one, two, three, and yanks for all she’s worth.
The initial pain of the strip leaving my body, with my hair in tow, takes my breath away. A sensation akin to being stung by a wasp with anger management issues burns through my torso and causes me to yelp in a pitch higher than I thought possible since puberty began.
Forty minutes later and I am wishing for a blunt instrument to put me out of my misery. But I’m naked and trapped. Vaishaliben does chests, arms, legs and, basically, everything except the most intimate areas, where she feels guys would be more comfortable having a man take over proceedings, hence the presence of Ashlie.
Into the treatment room he steps and I start wondering if anyone would be perturbed by the sight of a nude journalist running through Soho screaming. ‘It won’t hurt as much from now on,’ says Ashlie, reassuring me as much as a gilt-edged invitation for a private dinner in Gaddafi’s tent.
For my most delicate regions, hot wax is used instead of strip paper. Ashlie smears the custard-coloured gunk all over me and, yes, gently clasps my penis to move it out of the way. The wax almost immediately hardens into a gel that can be ripped off in flapjack-style slabs.
Incredibly, this isn’t nearly as painful as getting my chest waxed. Or perhaps I’d simply got used to the notion of having my hair taken away from me so violently. Either way, I resolve from this moment onwards to give flowers to my partner every time she goes to a salon for a wax. I’m finally getting my own taste of what women go through to please men who have watched an excessive amount of hair-free pornography.
Three hours later and back home in South London, I’m lying in bed while writing this and I look and feel like a giant baby who has been plucked and trussed for some kind of cannibalistic cattle market. Which I suppose works as an adequate description for the fleshpots of Ibiza or Corfu.
I’m perfectly beach ready for the Med. Yet, I’ve timed it perfectly for the definitive end to the holiday season. So will my ‘boyzilian’ suit the less exotic climes of Stockwell and Brixton in autumn?
I must admit that I quite enjoy the fugitive vibe that comes with having a pubic area as serenely empty as a one-way flight to Pyongyang. I feel a little lighter. I feel more supple. The sensation of touching my hairless body is rather pleasing – like placing my hands on a warm teapot.
I won’t be butterflying past Tom Daley in a swimming pool anytime soon. But I also like knowing that my ‘boyzilian’ has made me look just a little more like a Roman senator and just a little less like Barry Gibb.
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