You may have seen the adverts before the Paris Olympics. Tom Daley, in what Pink News called a “thirsty” campaign for Gillette, is in his skimpy trunks, washboard abs and … almost no body hair. The new razor for more intimate body parts is, Daley said on Instagram, “for when it really, really matters”. This is fair enough – he is a diver, after all. But then why is footballer Jude Bellingham, modelling Skims underwear, also apparently hairless? And has Love Island banned male body hair altogether?
Hairless men are nothing new, of course. But what makes Daley’s Gillette advert a break from the hairless men of adverts past is that – between the tiny trunks and the close-up footage – the picture invites you to think that this is more than just a trim of unwanted tuftiness: the modern man now shaves everything. “More and more guys across the UK are grooming their intimate area,” a spokesperson for Gillette said, launching the range, “but until today we didn’t offer products with purpose-built features for such a sensitive and complex job.”
