An Inside Look at Gay Men's Hairless Butt Obsession

Being gay and a bottom (ie, someone who receives penetration) I'm often concerned about my butt hair situation. Countless hookups have requested a butt that's polished, lacking even the tiniest hint of stubble. It's unfair, when you think about it: Being penetrated in itself forces you to be vulnerableyet guys also have the gall to ask us to look "perfect" during the act? But it's what I've come to expect: Which is why, in that dismal shower stall, I pushed through the pain of twisting my body and went forth with my trusty razor.

It's not that I've had bad luck in picking partners who care way too much about butt hair. It's a real point of concern among gay men. On , a 188k-member Reddit page, bottoms ask questions like "What's the shaving situation in Manhattan?" and "As a bottom twink, should I embrace my butt hair?" On Grindr, the go-to hookup app , tops (ie, the folks who do the penetrating) talk about their preferences for smooth behinds, and complain about the unpleasant chafing caused by coarse hair during sex. Well, I have news for you, tops: It's not exactly pleasant to figure out how to shave your own butt. (This isn't to say all tops are bad. An anonymous source told me his partners have literally offered to shave his butt for their own enjoyment. Romance isn't dead!)

\"Porn does a lot to teach us that a smooth bottom is the only bottom.\"

This fixation on "porcelain ass cheeks" could be coming from mainstream porn, says Madison Moore, author and assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and women's studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Seeing absolutely hairless, smooth bottoms in porn does a lot to teach us that a smooth bottom is the only bottom," he says.

Besides porn, the popularity of early-2000s boy bands might have something to do with the "mass exodus of body hair" in gay culture, says Daniel Saynt, founder of sexual wellness club NSFW . Young, attractive, hairless men la Justin Timberlake and Lance Bass became the idealand hairy men dealt with it be excessively shaving, trimming, and grooming.

But shaving your butt isn't just a time-consuming act in support of unrealistic male beauty standards (although surely, that should be enough to make us think twice about it). It could also be bad for your health, depending on how you do it, says Nicholas K. Mollanazar, MD, MBA, FAAD, a board certified dermatologist from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

When shaving our skin, we are creating microtraumas to the surface of it, Mollanazar says. This trauma results in microscopic tears and fissures at the very top layers of the skin. These act as entry points for infections, such as HPV, the virus implicated in genital warts. This is why it is very important never to shave the perianal or genital areas on the day of expected intercourse." (If you're gonna shave at all, Mollanazar recommends doing it one to three days prior to doing the deed.)

a peach next to a razor BusinessInsider USA Images

I did find a few bottoms who said they were into itfor their own pleasure. Ty Mitchell, a writer and gay porn performer, insists he never removes his butt hair for anyone but himself, because he likes it. He goes to every 6-8 weeks, where he pays $50 for a 15-minute "full butt" service. The wax consists of lemon juice, water, and sugar; he says the process is generally less irritating than shaving and lasts a lot longer, and that his hair even grows back thinner.

One man who sells videos on the porn app OnlyFanshe goes by the username @damagedbttmtold me he prefers receiving rim jobs and penetrative sex when his own hair doesn't get in the way.

"[Shaving] makes the area around your hole more sensitive so that when youre getting rimmed by a guy with facial hair, it feels one-hundred times better, he says. Its almost like that feeling of release when you pull a pine needle you stepped on out of your foot, but better because theres no pain.

Is that really it? The only plus-side to the very precise hard work of fancying your peach is a pleasurable tingle from getting rimmed? I guess you also spare yourself some uncomfortable hair-tugging when he's pulling outbut even still. Is the pressure for bottoms to shave their butts really worth all the stress?

On Twitter, Remy Durancontestant on MTV's sexually-fluid season of Are You the One and noted " coolest person in the room " called for bottoms to stop shaving their butts the same way some women have resisted patriarchal beauty expectations. "2020 is the year bottoms stop shaving their hole for tops!!!!" he wrote in a protected tweet, meaning it's only visible to approved followers. "Hairy Holes are for bottoms as to what the new hairy armpits and legs are to women!!!!! Let it grow, let it show!"

According to Moore, the most important [thing] is that no one should be made to feel unsexy because of their natural body. Saynt echoes the sentiment, pointing out that with increased gay and bisexual mens visibility in mainstream mediaand representation of all types of bodies and hairiness levelswere getting a wider vision of what a man can be.

Will I continue to shave my butt hair? I think so, yes. But what I'll also practice more of is verifying the intention of my actions: Am I doing this to my body for me, or for someone else's enjoyment? Because the key to pleasure and personal acceptanceand, like, actually deciding whether I should shave my butt hair or notis mine.

So, tops: Dont ask us to shave our butt hair. We'll do it if we want to.