Furry Travis Kelce and the great men's grooming debate: To wax, shave or leave body hair be?

Travis Kelce is a lot of things. He’s a three-time Super Bowl champion, a family man, a successful podcaster and a famous boyfriend to superstar Taylor Swift. He’s also hairy and not shy about it.

Photos from the football player’s latest GQ profile featured his bearlike appearance. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end was photographed in a Florida swamp driving an ATV, riding in an airboat and cuddling reptiles while wearing couture jackets without shirts, putting his full hairy chest, shoulders and stomach on display. Kelce’s back, which did not get captured by the magazine, is also covered in fur, which was revealed when paparazzi pics in May of the 35-year-old sparked headlines, memes and a fresh conversation about male body hair.

“I looked at this [photo] and I’m like, get your back waxed, dude,” comedian Jared Freid shared on an episode of The JTrain Podcast while commenting on trending pop culture conversations. He’s one to talk.

“I’ve been getting waxed once a month for the last 15 years of my life,” Freid tells Yahoo. “When it comes to grooming, it’s a very normal thing.”

He’s not an anomaly. While not every man talks about it, many trim, shave or wax parts of their body beyond the face. Smooth-chested actors, glossy Calvin Klein models and increasingly groomed beachgoers all hint at the trend. But the grooming conversation still carries stigma, especially when it moves beyond beards and mustaches.

The quiet business of men’s grooming

Whether hair removal is a rare task or a routine, most men are doing it to some capacity. In fact, shaving trends and products are a part of the current boom in the market of men’s grooming. The conversation around it, though, can still be touchy.

While Gillette ads showing men shaving facial hair have been normalized over the years, examples of hair removal on other parts of the body are seen less often, and mostly as a joke. Take The 40-Year-Old Virgin, for example, where Steve Carell’s chest wax was turned into comedy gold.

“That scene is a disservice. It’s not that bad,” says Freid, who believes the portrayal of pain and embarrassment has kept men from getting a wax themselves. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing anything about their furry bodies.

“There’s still pressure, especially on social media, for men to be hairless,” Patrick Aramouni, a 36-year-old fitness and food influencer, tells Yahoo. “There’s definitely a stigma, mainly because a lot of guys have no idea what they’re supposed to do with their body hair.”

When he first noticed his own growing at 16 years old, he didn’t get any guidance on how to groom it, or if he was even supposed to. Eventually, it was a conversation with a friend that influenced him to do so. “He insisted that shaving my chest and abs would make me look more ripped ... I gave in,” says Aramouni.

TV personality Derek Zagami says classmates teased his early hair growth in middle school, even stuffing razors in his mailbox. His mom would use Nair on his upper lip and brows, but it wasn’t until he was swimming competitively that he started removing hair from other parts of his body. “Obviously, that makes you faster,” the 31-year-old recalls thinking.

Now, he enjoys the look of keeping his chest and leg hair trimmed — and he’s noticed that other men feel the same, given the appearance of bare arms, legs and backs at the gym.

How are they doing it?

Zagami has never been a fan of using shaving cream with a razor, but he’s graduated from the hair removal cream to an electric shaver. He usually grooms when he has a specific occasion and focuses on keeping hair short, rather than removing it completely.

“I don’t like leg hair as much, so I trim it and clean it up a little bit. Chest hair, I hate because you look like you have more weight on you when you're not trimmed,” he says. On a regular basis, he can get away with grooming just the top part of his chest and even focusing on his arms rather than his underarms. But if he’s going topless, it’s all got to be taken care of. “I have to call my boyfriend in to do the back.”

Zagami has started considering other alternatives like waxing or even lasering certain parts of his body for more permanent hair removal. Freid is ritualistic when it comes to his full back wax. “I like doing it and I can’t see why any man wouldn’t,” he says.

Back hair remains the most controversial

While methods of hair removal are varied, there’s one thing that the men I spoke with agreed on: Back hair is a no-go. Hence, the response to Kelce’s patchy back. He’s far from the only man to be seen with a hairy back, but he stands out in having it on display when people have made their preferences against it known, especially as somebody in the public eye.

While a 2021 YouGov poll found that 64% of Americans find back hair on men unattractive, hairless backs shown across popular media had already confirmed how most feel. So much so that Seth Rogen’s furry back became a notable part of a sex scene in the movie Neighbors.

Aramouni doesn’t see that stigma changing. He shows off his well-maintained chest, arm and leg hair on social media, while a shot of his back will reveal that it’s bare. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to justify having hair on my back,” he says.

Freid says back hair makes him feel dirty, and having it waxed off ultimately helps him to feel more confident. “I know that it’s a better day when I get that done,” he says.

The bottom line

For as many negative reactions to Kelce’s back, there were also positive ones normalizing body hair. Even among subreddits dedicated to male grooming, there remains a balance between men who are unbothered by it and those who feel uncomfortable with it.

“In a public setting, it is still more widely acceptable to not have hair in areas like your back as a man,” Andrew Glass, the cofounder of wax brand Wakse, tells Yahoo. “But I think now with the rise of the dad bod and the Travis Kelces of the world, it's becoming more of an accepted thing.”

Still, cultural pressure isn’t disappearing. Just as women have long faced beauty standards tied to hair removal, men now navigate their own version — whether they embrace it, quietly maintain it or go fully smooth. For Kelce, the buzz will fade. But for plenty of men, the conversation his back hair sparked is just beginning.