I knew there’d be trouble. Maria did too. She just didn’t want to admit it. She’d spent the night at his place. The sex had been pretty good. Not excellent, but hey, you can’t expect a man to get it right first time, every time. Besides, he’d shagged her again the next day and made omelettes.

All in all, it seemed to be a promising situation, but in the harsh morning light Maria realised something she’d overlooked the night before – stubble. Stubble in all the wrong places – Daniel shaved his chest.
“Is that weird?” Maria asked. “Or am I just being old-fashioned?” Given the option, Maria prefers a man without a rug on his torso, but the image of her partner lathering up with shaving foam and his Mach Turbo disturbed her somewhat. After all, he wasn’t doing it for sport, only for aesthetics. It seemed a little vain; it just wasn’t very… manly.
Is there anything wrong with a man shaving his chest? Objectively, no. It’s not illegal, immoral, debauched or decadent. A little manscaping and grooming is all very well, particularly if hair has snuck off the head and down onto the shoulders – grim, I think – but c’mon, lads, let’s not veer too close to Gavin Henson territory either.
We could blame the trend on CK One, on Tom Ford, on the sneaky marketing execs who’ve turned men’s skin care into a growth industry, on the dandies, fops and New Romantics in rock’n’roll since Little Richard led the way back in the 50s, on David Beckham with his thongs and sarongs, or on that old stand-by, the media in general, but the truth is, there have always been men who are slightly more feminine, or refined – depending upon how you look at it – and for the most part, women like them.
Psychologists from Durham and St Andrews universities in the UK conducted research into faces and found that women believe that men with softer, more feminine faces make better long-term partners. According to the shrinks, women think these men are more likely to be faithful and take an interest in parenting. We want the bad boys for sex and the nice ones for keeps.
That’s fine by me. A certain amount of femininity in a man is a good thing. It’s civilizing. Too much testosterone and not enough deodorant is a bad combination. Left to his own devices, the unreconstructed macho man would do nothing but have sex, watch football and pillage. But too much femininity is not sexy either. What you want is “just gay enough.” Yin and yang – it’s all about balance.
Maria slept with Daniel for the next few weeks until she noticed a trend. He liked to be on the bottom. Always. She fucked him. And she fucked him again. He could make a mean steak dinner and had a decent collection of porn, but he never returned the favour. Boring.
I’d warned her, but she hadn’t listened. Cruel fate had once sent a chest-shaver my way and it’s a slippery slope, I tell you (the relationship, not the chest!). I let him use my moisturizer without qualms; I didn’t think it odd that he enjoyed bubble bath and candles for a little alone time; nor did I mind him playing amateur chemist by mixing my perfumes with his own to create a distinct ‘signature scent’.
Then he had a pimple breakout. A little acne wouldn’t put me off, but when he stole my cover stick and refused to return it, I knew our relationship had reached a proverbial fork in the road. I wanted to end it; he wanted to talk. He wanted closure; I just wanted a drink.
This is the kind of dilemma many a modern miss has had to face when dating a metrosexual – he’s perfectly nice, but you can’t help wishing he was just a little more masculine. Worse still, if like me, you’re a card-carrying feminist, it’s hard to admit this to your friends. After years of wishing for a man who was more like a woman, you find it ain’t all you’d thought it would be. So do you dump him, or stay together and fight over the bathroom mirror, cupboard space and whose turn it is to buy the scented candles?
Here is an undisputable fact of life – there are men and there are women. Two sexes. But that’s not the whole story – into that mix add she-males and bois, the transgendered and transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag queens, drag kings and drag queers, heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, the asexual and the omni-sexual and yep, it gets a little confusing. Gender and sexual identity a weird and wonderful continuum of what it means to be human.
It used to be an article of faith with me that sexual orientation and gender didn’t matter. In many ways they don’t, and certainly shouldn’t have any impact on the rights and privileges you have under the law.
In my youth I believed that bisexuality and androgyny were the most highly evolved states of being. Men and women? Pah! I liked boys who looked like girls and girls who looked like boys. As long as someone was pretty and had good taste in music, I really didn’t care if they were male or female. People are sexual, and as far as I was concerned, the rest was immaterial.
Guess what? I was wrong. Mea culpa. I’m a “live and let live” kinda gal and I’m happy to celebrate diversity, but not in my bedroom. I’m straight. It’s not big, clever or even kinky. As far as sexuality goes, being straight is pretty much the bog standard, but so what? I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve experimented and I’ve checked out my options and I know what I like – and what I like is men. Real men.
I hate to admit it, but damn it, someone has got to say it – girls, when it comes to sex, metrosexuals are hit and miss, or perhaps I mean more ‘miss’ than hit. They can shag you, they can screw you, and they can even “make love” to you, but they’ll never be able to ride the arse off you. They just don’t know how.
The plain, unadorned, politically incorrect truth of the matter is, if you want to fuck – sweaty, messy, filthy, nasty, deliciously dirty fucking – you need a man. A real man.
Luckily, it’s easy to separate the real men from the boys. Whether they’re straight, gay, bisexual or somewhere in between, real men don’t shave their chests. They’ve got balls – real men wax!