Hairless Chests Abound on Reality TV, But Do Real Men Wax?

Reality shows like ‘Love Island’ and ‘The Bachelorette’ are filled with bald-chested male contestants. In real life, the evidence that hairy chests are an endangered species is not quite as conclusive

In a voyeuristic hour of watching “Love Island” clips on YouTube, I learned the following things about Britain’s most popular reality show: Contestants somehow win money by dating; Majorca, where the show takes place, should really pay ITV2 for this inadvertent tourism campaign; British slang makes everything sound like a double entendre (“I love the fact that you got a little derby”). Oh, and none of the men have chest hair.

This isn’t necessarily news. Dating back to at least the 2009 debut of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” hairless...