(About naughty bits — men’s testicles and women’s breasts — so not to everyone’s taste.)
From the ads of brands site, “Ad of the Day | Manscaped Gives Men’s “Boys” the Love They Deserve”, from 3/8/24:
There’s a lot of data out there about men but only one truth… 100% of men think their “groin” is the most important part of their body. [AZ: I’d like to dispute that, since I’m deeply attached to my heart and my brain; and since if I had to choose between losing my testicles and losing my arms or my legs, I’d happily give up my balls; but that’s a topic for another day] But the problem is almost all of them feel uncomfortable talking about it. Especially when it comes to grooming. [AZ: looking ahead and clarifying this murky text, what Manscaped is deprecating here is hairy testicles, not pubic hair in general or testicles in general]
The goal for “The Boys” campaign was to stop treating male groin grooming like it’s some kind of taboo. It’s 2024 afterall, we need to normalize groin grooming for the benefit of men (and their partners) everywhere.
The challenge? How to talk about men’s nether regions in a TV-safe way. Enter the visual metaphor. The spot depicts the…you know what… as a pair of miniatures identical to every full-size male character, always attached to him at hip height. The visual allowed us to showcase exactly what the product was designed to do by changing the miniatures’ hairstyles throughout the spot.
(#1) His boys before manscaping
(#2) His boys after manscapingThis visual metaphor opened up a whole world – one where every male would have two identical groomed boys. The jokes unfolded naturally as the boys behaved like men’s body parts — bobbing around whilst jogging or floating to the top of a hot tub. And the ungroomed boys, well, they had a rough time of it [AZ: they were sweaty and uncomfortable and nowhere near as cool as other men’s boys] until they finally got a little love via The Lawn Mower® 5.0 Ultra, MANSCAPED’s newest groin and body hair trimmer.
You can watch the Manscaped “Give your boys the love they deserve” 2024 Super Bowl commercial here. A shorter version has gotten lots of play on tv.
your boys. My focus in this posting is the item
boys ‘testicles’, in the boys or someone’s boys
that figures centrally in the commercials (and I note the parallel use of boys ‘breasts (of a woman)’). There are places where testicles are a natural topic — in particular, in discussions of the qualities of men’s underwear — and there examples of the usage are easy to find, as here:
The secret to Shinesty’s underwear for men is our proprietary Ball Hammock® Pouch technology that gives your boys the extra space they need to stay comfortable and adjustment-free, all damn day. (link)
Pair of Thieves men’s underwear is the ultimate loins spoiling, package-affirming, best men’s underwear your boys will ever know. (link)
Big Boys Pants feature an anatomical pouch design which conforms perfectly to your male anatomy. Your ‘boys’ hang naturally in the pouch, providing a feeling so comfortable that you’ll swear that you’re not wearing anything at all. (link)
Note the quotation marks around boys in the last of these cites, indicating that the writer suspects that the usage might be a relatively recent one that their readers are not familiar with.
I was a bit surprised at that, believing that the usage (for testicles, also for breasts) was well-established.
I was wrong.
I’m something of a specialist in the language of bodyparts, the language of sex, taboo and raunchy vocabulary, and euphemisms; I see way more of this stuff than ordinary people do, and have done so for decades. So my judgments about frequency and novelty in everyday use are unreliable (well, everyone’s judgments are unreliable: ordinary people have no synoptic view of usage, only their recollection of their personal experiences; my problem is being too close to the data). For this I go to sources, with citations and datings.
And for testicular (or mammary) boys there are none. Nothing in the OED or GDoS or any smaller dictionary I could find. Nothing at all. The evidence from the lexicographers says that the spread of this metaphorical usage is in fact recent, so recent it hasn’t yet found its way into the sources. But coming soon to a big dictionary near you.
So much for the vocabulary item boys (testicular or mammary). Now on to the items manscaping (noun) and manscape (verb) and the practices they refer to.
The manscaping landscape. As a start, from my 9/6/23 posting “Manscape architects”:
Today it’s manscaping day. Just to remind you, my focus is on vocabulary — the noun manscaping and the verb manscape — not on the practices this vocabulary refers to, of trimming, shaving, and removing male pubic hair.
Nevertheless, the practices provide the background, so a few words on them are in order.
Grooming pubic hair. Extensive treatment, including historical and cross-cultural notes, in the Wikipedia article on pubic hair. Among the topics there: a common Western artistic convention for hairless pubes in nudes, both female and male; [and] the growth of pubic shaving and waxing for women
… The number of devices and products for grooming male pubic hair is astonishing. [examples follow]
The Manscaped brand offers its own collection of devices and products along these lines, designed to achieve various aesthetic ends: trimmers to give pubic hair a well-groomed look (like a neatly trimmed beard), shavers to remove pubic hair entirely, which can have two effects: shaved pubes make a penis look larger (it’s not hidden in the shrubbery), a desirable effect for many American men; and since pubic hair traps sweat, which then interacts with bacteria on the skin to create a noticeable smell (crotch pong!), shaving the crotch significantly reduces the smell (though it doesn’t eliminate it completely; for that, many companies offer genital deodorants).
What’s novel in the Manscaped brand is its focus specifically on testicular hair; for them, hairless testicles are beautiful testicles — see their metaphorical before and after shots in #1 and #2 — and since testicles are a great deal more delicate than pubic skin, they require special shaving-care products.
[Digression: A more than merely aesthetic objection to hairy testicles comes from the practice of oral-testicular sex, a practice that can be immensely satisfying to both participants if done with care and delicacy — I can supply glowing testimonials from long-ago personal experience with both sides of the act — but which might be impeded by, ick, hairs in the mouth of the active participant.]
And so we get Manscaped’s packages of groin-care tools and products, like this one:
(#3) Two electric devices (a Lawn Mower trimmer for groin and body grooming, a Weed Whacker nose hair trimmer) and two emollient substances for the testicles (an aftershave lotion and an anti-chafing deodorant); there’s a fancier package with more stuff (see below)
And then the inventory of groin-care items:
(#4) With three care products specifically for a guy’s boys
My own testicles are decidedly hairy, and I’m happy with that; but if your tastes run to the smooth, Manscaped stands at the ready to serve you.
Further vocabulary note. Unsurprisingly, there is evidence, from men’s underwear ads (again), for guys ‘testicles’. You can probably find BrE lads similarly used. At the moment, these look like fresh metaphors, coined on the spot — not yet conventionalized and spread throughout speech communities.