I’ll just make a very quick comment here because I don’t want to distract from the points you’re making, but we cis gay men talk about this too. While it might not seem obvious from the current deluge of Instagram thirst posts featuring muscular, relatively hairy gay men, the gay twink culture is very present across our communities. Twinks and twink admirers have debated the eurocentric distaste of body hair for as long as I can remember. You can even find mentions of it in 1950s muscle and fitness magazines surreptitiously directed to gay male audiences.

The public popularity of body hair seems to come and go in waves, but I don’t know how significantly personal preferences track public popularity perceptions. I think that might be an interesting question.