Considering the torture that Roman men endured (having their beards plucked out, or shaved with dull bronze razor blades), having your body hair shaved must have been nasty.
Do any accounts survive of this?
Or did Roman gals go for the furry look?
How do you know the bronze blades were dull?
Not all Roman men shaved their faces or bodies. There are plenty of Roman statues of men in full beard. My SWAG is that some Roman women may have shaved, but that most didn’t.
Roman styles changed over their history of oh 2200 years. Till about the Punic wars the majority of men wore beards. After that till the era of Hadrian, many were clean shaved. I suspect that the same was the case with women.
There were a lot of different depilatory methods used in the tepidariums - shaving, depilatory creams, and straight-up plucking, which evidently annoyed some people with the resulting 40-Year-Old-Virgin-style screams.
Since there have been findings of Roman Empire era woodworking hand planes and tools with iron blades, I think the idea that they shaved with dull bronze blades can’t be accurate.
Bronze can carry quite an edge. Its generally harder than iron(though not steel).
Wikipedia has this to say on the subject:
From here: Cosmetics in ancient Rome - Wikipedia
It’s wikipedia and the cite for it appears to be a bit munged, so make of it what you will.
ETA: DSeid’s post wasn’t there when I started typing. I should learn to preview.
I always wondered about those greek and roman statues, and even up to renaissance paintings. Who decided that women should show no pubic hair - had it been the fashion in greek and roman times and also in renaissance Italy? (why also was there no visible genitalia - the Barbie-Doll look? Considering how many statues showed penises it can’t be some sort of modesty?)
This is Greek, not Roman, but there’s a passage in one of Aristophanes’ plays (The Congresswomen, if I recall correctly), in which a woman mentions singing off her pubic hair with an oil lamp.