GQ Says Chest Hair Is Back, We Say It Never Went Away
Men’s fashion magazine, GQ has just declared that chest hair is officially “sexy again.” Bless! This is not news to DNA readers!
Tyler Chin’s March 2026 trend piece for GQ declares chest hair a full-blown comeback story, traced through Paul Anthony Kelly’s viral Central Park shoot, Jon Gries fronting a Jacquemus campaign, Dylan O’Brien in Send Help, and Niall Horan flashing a furry pec in GQ‘s own pages.
We told you in January
DNA covered this exact comeback four months before GQ filed their copy. The hairy chest is back and these men are leading the 2026 resurgence, which went up at the start of the year, and no one in our DMs was even surprised. Body hair, our readers reminded us, has not been controversial in queer circles for a long time.
Years of receipts on our covers
Want the receipts? Look at the covers. DNA #310, #307, #300, #298, #294, and #292 have all spotlighted men whose chest hair did not require commentary. They were just hot men, on the cover, with hair where hair grows. Add the steady stream of fitness talent we feature in the Men section, almost none of whom have seen a wax strip in years, and you have a publication that’s been quietly running the chest hair beat since the year 2000.
Who actually owns a comeback?
GQ frames the “return” of body hair as a quiet rebellion against looksmaxxers, body optimisers and Marvel-physique perfection. Fair in the ’90s: Calvin Klein billboards have plenty to answer for. The trouble is, you can only call something a comeback if it actually went away. We never threw out the razor, mostly because our readers never picked it up.
Welcome aboard, GQ
To Paul Anthony Kelly’s credit, his line is the sentence the whole conversation should have started with. “I have chest hair, I own it. I don’t really want to fit into anyone’s mold,” he told GQ. That’s the spirit DNA has been backing on covers, in every Men gallery, and across 26 years of issues.
So pull up a towel, GQ. The water is warm. Some of us have been swimming in it the entire time.
