Scruffy-looking Celebrities

For some time now, I’ve wondered about the male celebrities who seem never to shave.

I don’t mean the men who wear discernible beards and/or mustaches. Well-kept facial hair is attractive on a man. I mean the ones who look as if they just forgot to shave that day.

I suppose that if I’ve thought about it all, I’ve assumed that the unshaven men in the television dramas that I watch–like the agent called Deeks in NCIS Los Angeles–are supposed to look scruffy because they work undercover and want to fit in with disreputable criminal types who practice poor hygiene.

Two incidents have made me realize that the unshaven look is intentional.

The first was watching a television ad in which a man’s face is shown surrounded by hands doing something to get the man ready for the day. One of the hands seems to be shaving him with an electric shaver, but when it withdraws, the man is still unshaven.

The second revelation came as I watched an episode of Major Crimes in which an actor named Luke Perry plays a fictitious TV detective. Perry didn’t strike me as being particularly good looking in the part, probably because throughout the story–which covers several days–he sports the scruffy unshaven look. Then I realized that two of the women, Captain Raydor and the Deputy District Attorney, were swooning over him.

I don’t get it. Is the partially shaved look supposed to be sexy?