Movies & TV Star Trek Some Thoughts About Spock’s Chest Hair Or: We Need to Talk About Vulcan Manscaping on Strange New Worlds By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on July 17, 2025 Credit: Marni Grossman/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marni Grossman/Paramount+ We all watch television shows for different things. I have this conversation frequently when Star Trek comes up because some folks love over half a century of continuity and others do not; some folks enjoy allegorical storytelling and others think it’s overplayed; some folks live for the episodes that are downright silly (me, it’s me), and others believe you are destroying the structural integrity of the narrative or simply don’t care for them (and we will never understand each other, and I have to learn to be okay with that). This was a weird way of getting to my point—which is that when Spock appeared shirtless in Strange New World’s third-season episode, “Wedding Bell Blues,” I sat up (more than I already was) and took notice. Not for the reason you’d think, though. No, really. Stop that. Look, Ethan Peck is a beautiful man, but that’s entirely beside my point. Which is that he had chest hair. Spock has chest hair again. Why again, do you ask? Well, he didn’t before. And then he did before before. More explanation is needed. Whether you know it or not, Star Trek has a history with manly chest hair. It started with the Original Series, when William Shatner was required to shave his chest in scenes where Kirk was shirtless because that was considered more attractive for the time period. Behind-the-scenes gossip indicates that Shatner did not enjoy this practice because of all the itching incurred, but it persisted. For the ratings, you see. Yes, sorry, this is the episode where they’re whipped by Space Nazis, but it’s the most illustrative of the point. (Screenshot: Paramount) Spock, on the other hand—not pegged as the romantic lead of the show, despite any audience opinions on that front—didn’t have such an intense regime in the body care department. When we see Leonard Nimoy shirtless, he’s got plenty of chest hair. Ergo, Spock has chest hair. He’s always had chest hair. (And fantastic eye shadow game, which Strange New Worlds has made no effort to introduce, and you bet I’m peeved about it.) So when Strange New Worlds started airing, and the first episode showed Spock having an intimate evening with his fiancée, T’Pring, you can imagine my confusion when the guy stood up smooth-chested and went to answer a call from Captain Pike. And not because he was breaking up a lovely evening with his betrothed—that part was entirely in character. It was just weird to notice the chest hair was missing. Some fans immediately noted that you could spot Ethan Peck’s chest hair over certain costumes in earlier episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, but that didn’t convince me of anything purposeful; it only informed us that the actor in question had chest hair and was required to remove it. And the most common reason to do that these days is the same reason they made Shatner shave in the ’60s—it’s popular. At the moment, it’s largely popular for the purpose of letting male actors show off muscle definition on camera. (Watch Charlie Cox in anything that’s not Daredevil and you’ll see what I mean.) If that was the only reason Ethan Peck was asked to shave or wax, I was annoyed on principle—Spock is canonically hairy! It may have not mattered from a character standpoint, but it absolutely mattered when it came to respecting the actor who originated the role. So I stewed over it a little bit. I may or may not have liked a couple of Tumblr posts complaining about the same thing. A smooth boy. (Screenshot: Paramount+) But now we get to this season, only to find that Spock’s chest hair has miraculously regrown—and I am about to lose my entire mind over it. Why? Not, as you might suspect, because I feel victorious over winning a battle with Paramount that no one ever realized we were having. No, it’s because this oddity has become something that could effect Star Trek canon (and fanon) unto the end of time. Because you can guess what it means, don’t you? You get it? The previously shiny smooth chest—you see what I’m getting at? Okay, I should probably explain that, too. If Spock (still) canonically has chest hair, that means he waxed for T’Pring. :gestures frantically: Do you see?? Look, I can’t wait, I have to keep going because my brain is on fire and it’s important to me that we all recognize what just happened here. Vulcans are a very culturally precise people. They’ve got lots of rules, byzantine and largely unspoken, about how other Vulcans should operate. T’Pring is a stickler for many of these rules, despite her affection for Spock, and that makes the body hair—or any lack thereof—a clue about some of these expectations. Let’s begin with the most obvious: This probably means that Vulcan women have a preference for men with less/no body hair. (Vulcan is technically supposed to be a matriarchy, so that would hold extra weight in courtship situations.) And that Spock—who is extremely self-conscious about how well he fits into Vulcan normative society due to being half-human—was so eager to please that he got rid of said body hair to make his soon-to-be wife happy. Did Spock assume, or did T’Pring ask him to take care of it outright? Either version of events is completely plausible, and both are devastating in terms of character development. Are Vulcans naturally less hairy than your average human? It seems likely, but I’d wager that there are still plenty of Vulcan men (and women!) with a little extra—are they self-conscious about it, too? Is there an entire underground hair depilation community on Vulcan that is simply not spoken about? Is there a different preference among male Vulcans, i.e. fellas, is it gay (in some circles) to have chest hair as a Vulcan because it signals that maybe you’re a man trying to attract other men? Is there a body hair code, like the human hanky code? Properly hairy Spock. (Screenshot: Paramount+) It also makes Spock’s choice to regrow said hair very telling in terms of where he’s at on his developmental journey—and where he’s headed. Effectively, growing his chest hair back not only makes it clear that perhaps he’s more interested in humans as romantic prospects (given his absolute mess of a situationship with Christine), but also that he might be dipping his tiniest toe into accepting his humanity more openly. He’s not all the way there yet, as the intervening years will prove, but he’s eyeing the path. While we’re on this subject, did Amanda teach Spock how to wax, or was this something he had to figure out on his own? (You know Sarek was no help and tells everyone he’s naturally hairless when he isn’t.) Did humans get back into chest waxing in this era on account of getting closer with the Vulcans and being influenced by their trends? Are we prepared to consider the anthropological implications of Vulcan male beauty standards? Is this thing on? There is no way of knowing—at the moment, though I supposed someone could always ask production or Ethan Peck himself—if this was always the plan, or if this change occurred to combat fan complaints, but either way, it’s glorious. (The latter would be much funnier.) And it occurred because a fictional playground with sixty years of continuity to back it up can only get richer and weirder the longer you play with it. Sometimes entirely by accident. Which is what I meant when I said that we all watch TV shows for different reasons. Because this is one of the main draws that keeps me sunk at the bottom of that Starfleet well. You can send down the bucket, but I’m not coming up any time soon. And as always, Star Trek finds new and increasingly odd ways to get me to cry over Spock—so I suppose they win again.[end-mark] The post Some Thoughts About Spock’s Chest Hair appeared first on Reactor.