Guys today I'm taking off my shirt-no. Not gonna, ow. Gonna leave my shirt on to talk
about whether or now women like men's chest hair because what I was astonished to find
this is a big scientific question mark.
If you look at studies for women's preferences for male chest hair--gay guys sorry there
just simply aren't a lot of studies looking at your preferences for male chest hair which
I know is obnoxious, so please fill me in in the comments below because I want to know
what you like--two common themes emerge. One, women's preferences change depending on where
they live. Two, scientists aren't exactly sure what drives our pro or con chest hair
preferences. If you go to some place like Cameroon, Sri Lanka or even England women
tend to show are stronger preference toward men having more chest hair. [Bad British accent].
'Ello governor, liking your old chest hair merican. Sorry. If we keep traveling around
and go to Finland, New Zealand, California, China, Slovakia and Turkey, women tend to
prefer less chest down there. And by down there I just mean here. Not talking pubes.
Yet. What gives with these regional differences in terms of women finding men's chest hair
more or less attractive? Researchers think there's clearly some kind of socio-cultural
element at work. One study stated women's preference for chest hair changes over the
years like fashion and is influenced by the media. Scientists have also looked into whether
there is a biological explanation for women being more attracted or less attracted to
chest hair. One prevailing theory is called the ectoparasite avoidance hypothesis which
is a clunky way of saying that we prefer men who have less chest hair because way, way,
way, way back in the olden days of yore, the more chest hair and body hair you had the
likelier it was that you were harboring some kind of parasite. We don't want parasites
all up in that business and so we would prefer guys with less body hair. However a study
that looked at women's chest hair preferences in Turkey and Slovakia found that nope that's
probably not the underlying issue. For both countries one of which Turkey has a higher
incidence of parasite-related infections compared to Slovakia, women's preferences for less
chest hair were equal. Let's look then at fertility. One study published in the journal
Behavioral Ecology found that the more fertile a woman is, i.e. if she is in the follicular
phase of her menstrual cycle the less chest hair she prefers. We might assume that chest
hair is a manly trait along with a deep voice and muscles, a chest full of hair signals
that there is a super manly dud in front of us. It turns out that biologically speaking
chest hair isn't so much related to testosterone. Men's chest hair is more closely related to
estradiol which is a form of estrogen. They think it makes sense that post-menopausal
women who have the lowest fertility are more attracted to men with more chest hair because
it signals that they have higher estradiol and lower testosterone and aren't like raging
all around and trying to go mate with everything. Estradiol is the same hormone that raises
up in fathers. Don't get it twisted guys with a lot of chest hair aren't necessarily feminine
dudes but rather estradiol might be nature's way of chilling guys out a little bit to stick
around more. And they did control for the generational Tom Selleck factor. Also saved
the creepiest chest hair correlation fact for last because when I read it I threw up
in my mouth a little bit. They found that in addition to fertility levels and sociocultural
influences it also appears that women's chest hair preferences are reflective of the amount
of chest hair their fathers have. And me personally, I like a bit of chest hair on a guy but I'm
now realizing that my father also has a lot of chest hair and um to that I say thanks
for making me feel like a creep science. Again. Now I want to know your thoughts on men's
chest hair and if you're a guy, do you groom that hair especially now that it's swimsuit
season? I don't know why it's in quotes. Let me know below in the comments.