Arnold Zwicky's Blog

In the November Details, in a feature on “America’s New Male Body Obsession”, an item on”D’Angelo’s Anatomy Lesson”:

Devil’s horns. Jesus crease. Groin dip. Thunder road. Dick cleavage. All euphemisms for a well defined inguinal ligament, a piece of anatomy we might not have considered had it not been for D’Angelo’s 2000 music video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”.

Still more synonyms: penis hips (pointing to the penis), G.I. Joe muscle, inguinal crease. An illustration from D’Angelo:

From the Wikipedia entry for D’Angelo:

[his] second single, “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” (a tribute to artist Prince) … became a huge R&B hit buoyed by an innovative yet infamous video featuring a nude D’Angelo from his face to his hips while singing the song.

These slang terms were new to me, though I was familiar with treasure trail for the median line of abdominal hair pointing in the same direction:

In response to rising levels of androgens (mainly testosterone) during and after puberty, the skin of the abdomen begins to produce coarser, longer and more pigmented hair (terminal hair). This process affects primarily men. Initially hair grows in a vertical line from the pubic area up to the navel and from the thorax down to the navel. Slang terms for this line of hair include “snail trail”, “happy line”, “happy trail”, or “treasure trail”. (link)

An illustration, with some shirt-lifting thrown in to accentuate the man’s charms:

This entry was posted on November 15, 2011 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Language and sexuality, Metaphor, Music, Pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.