Should Undershirts Be Worn To Cover A Hairy Chest? What About Removing Chest Hair?

This is a timely question about chest hair and undershirts because it also touches on the “manscaping” (trimming/removing body hair) topic.

Coincidentally, just yesterday I also replied to a woman reader’s question about shaving underarm hair to potentially minimize staining the underarm area of a shirt.

Here’s the question from Ray:

Hi TUG,

shot of a young alec baldwin – hairy chest and all.

I spent a bunch of time on your site searching for articles RE: chest hair, but I couldn’t find much.

I have chest hair that goes up my neck pretty high. It goes up to two or three finger widths underneath my adam’s apple. To cover up this chest hair, I’ve worn crewneck undershirts all my life, under polos, tshirts, buttoned dress shirts, unbuttoned dress shirts, and in any season. Since the chest hair goes up so high, the undershirt needs to have a high collar to cover the chest hair, which means my undershirts are always visible.

People tell me it’s unstylish to have a visible undershirt, and it’s really starting to bother me now.

What do you recommend I do in this situation? Is my only option to remove the chest hair by shaving/wax/laser?

Thank you!

So What Should Ray Do About His Chest Hair?

hey ray,

thanks for stopping by my site and for sending in your question!

here are two thoughts about your chest hair / undershirt question:

1. no matter what anyone says, it’s totally fine to have your undershirt collar show if you’re using an undershirt to cover high chest hair or a tattoo. if you continue wearing high collar undershirts to cover up, you might want to consider doing a little color matching or wear undershirts that have a complimentary color to what outer shirt you’re wearing. if you weren’t, then i’d definitely recommend wearing a v-neck undershirt over a crew neck. i think it looks a little more stylish when your undershirt collar is not showing.
2. there’s nothing wrong with trimming/shaving/waxing/nair-ing your chest hair either. lots of guys do it. personally, i trim mine using my beard trimmer and i prefer how it looks and feels over not doing it. my recommendation would be to start by trimming it, see how it looks to you, then make a decision from there. you may decide it’s not for you, then you’ll go back to wearing crew neck undershirts. you may however, decide that you prefer it and possibly try an even cleaner look with waxing/nairing. you could also try a little combo of waxing/nairing your higher chest hair and trimming the rest.

take a look at this article as well:

The V-Neck is the New Crew Neck

toward the bottom of that article, there’s a great video my friend antonio of real men real style did a little under a year ago that talks about wearing crew neck and v-neck undershirts. he also mentions a little bit about chest hair that i think you’ll find pretty interesting.

hope the info helps you out! let me know what you wind up doing/trying so i can share your progress with my readers!

Update

Ray’s gonna try a little trimming and see what he thinks!

Here’s another article about Wearing Undershirts at Work that also touches on the chest hair trimming topic.

Tags: featured, full-image, undershirt-chest-hair

Category: Ask Tug, Undershirt Style