What is the purpose of body hair?

Factual Questions
1

I did searches and read several hair related articles, including:
What’s the purpose of pubic hair? (January 1, 1982)
How does body hair know it’s been cut and grow back? (October 24, 1980)
Why does head hair grow indefinitely but other body hair doesn’t? (July 14, 198)

and a variety of others.

Now, I know that body hair (hair other than head hair, pubic hair, and axillary hair) may have served a purpose in the past. Now that we have developed clothing, advanced shelters, air conditioning, etc., what purposes does body hair serve now?

Feel free and list positive and negative ones.

I’m also curious as to the ups and downs of having the other hair types (head, pubic, and armpit).

Are there benefits or detriments to having these hairs other than societal?

2

It doesn’t have to serve a purpose at this time. All it has to do to remain with us is not get in the way of reproducing viable offspring, who then go on to have their own offspring.

There might come a time when the biological effort to grow body hair becomes an evolutionary disadvantage. If that happens, then those people whose genes have eliminated the tendency to produce body hair will have more successful offspring than those people whose genes dictate the growth of body hair. It would take a few generations to sort it all out, but we could eventually end up as truly hairless apes.

Just not any time soon.

3

Protecting orifices from foreign particles is one major one.

4

So I’m not hurting myself in any way if I remove all of the hair on my body except for my eyebrows, right? (Or even them, if I so choose?)

5

Well, eyebrows do greatly reduce how much forehead sweat ends up in your eyes, so you might want to consider keeping them.

Definitely keep your eyelashes.

6

I love my leg hair. I can wear shorts in the middle of winter, and my legs won’t be the cold parts of my body.

7

OK, good stuff - a reason to keep some part of the body hair.

As far as the leg hair goes, though, that’s one of the areas I have not yet brought myself to remove hair from. Keeping your legs warm while choosing to not wear protective clothing in lower temperatures could be considered, I suppose, a benefit.

Any other benefits to hair on other parts of the body? Genuinely interested :slight_smile:

8

I was thinking about this today, and I remember reading that the actual question is why don’t we have thicker hair on the rest of our bodies. Also, I’ve read that pubic, underarm, and chest hair acts to trap the pheromones, so the opposite sex is more turned on when they smell you.

Might wanna keep the nostril hairs, too.

9

I trim the outer ones that are visible, but keep some of the inner ones to filter the air going through.

The armpit and pubic hair keeping the scent is discussed in one of the articles. But in the 21st century, we have Axe fragrances, Old Spice, and Calvin Klein scents. Personally, I prefer to smell my girlfriend scented like lavender bath oil than the strong odor of perspiration.

I think any advantage we might have gained from those parts of the body trapping attractive scents have been replaced by antiperspirant and cologne. As we now have shelter and clothing, I think a lot of the other hair may have become obsolete also.

10

Keeping your chest hair will show that you actually mowed the lawn/washed the car/ ate your brussel sprouts when you were a child.

11

That’s not body hair, That’s a pelt. :smiley:

12

You’re right in that the advantage has lessened, but the way I understand evolution, we’re not going to lose them unless it prevents us from reproducing. Also, humans evolved over thousands of years. Just because we invented colognes a few hundred years ago doesn’t mean we’re going to adapt to that overnight (in evolution time scale).

13

I guess the purpose of my question isn’t whether or not humans will lose all their bodily hair in the next generation or two … it’s more immediate.

I’m trying to find out if I’m making my health or anything else worse if I decide to remove all body hair. Let’s say I went tomorrow and got a full-body (laser, electrolysis, magical hair remover) treatment and all my body hair would no longer grow back.

Will bad things happen? Will I develop some weird skin cancer in 5 years? Do I become more susceptible to contagion? Does anything else bad happen?

14

Eyelashes serve a purpose of trapping some particles that might otherwise get in the eye, but that cannot be very important. Eyebrows could conceivably serve a purpose of protection from blows. The real question is why we keep hair on the head, face (males), underarms and pubic areas. Good for lice, not for us.

I have a niece who used to have a beautiful head of long straight hair. One day, it all fell out. Some autoimmune disease (they call it alopecia, but that just means no hair). No head hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no underarm hair, and, I assume, no pubic hair. Esthetics aside, there are no functional problems. She didn’t find a wig comfortable, so she wore a head scarf. Whether the wider use of head scarves by Muslim women would cause her to stop, I don’t know.

15

Lighting my furnace pilot light it took me too long to strike a match after turning on the gas so one arm got a fireball depilatory. It was autumn so I got to study the difference between one lightly hairy arm vs one that was completely hairless. The bare one got cold faster, especially in still air or a very-slight breeze. Even the bit of hair on the other arm seemed to trap a layer of warm air near my skin, but if the wind increased they became equally cold.

16

Among the reasons advanced for body hair are:

  1. Increased tactile sensation. Acts as a magnifier for sensation of the bug crawling on your skin.

  2. Retention of body smells. Mmmm mmmm good. At least at a subcortical level.

  3. A visual sexual flag. Sexual maturity and just plain sexy design. I suspect modern culture may have overlaid that one some. Plus the East German swimmers and their axillary hair kinda spoiled it permanently.

  4. Retention of dingleberries so that toilet tissue companies have a specific feature to market (although they manage to finder subtler messaging than “We don’t give you dingleberries!”)

  5. A home for lice. Wait a minute; that’s not really a feature.

There are probably some I have not thought of.

17

Each hair of any type has a sebaceous gland associated with it. The gland produces an oily substance that not only protects the hair itself, but also lubricates the surrounding skin.

If you had no oil, your skin would quicky dry out, chap and split. Therefore the gland is essential, and in some places the hair is microscopic…The connection between the hair and its gland means that you are going to have hair everywhere except your palms and the soles of your feet.

And BTW, shaving/plucking does not remove the gland. I don’t know about laser hair removal however.

18

My Mom always told to me to eat my vegetables, cuz “it will put hair on your chest” I naturally inquired why she was eating her vegetables. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

Excellent answers from sunstone, Chief Pedant, dropzone, and Hari Seldon, thanks!

I had grown long head hair myself in the 90s for about 6 years, then wore it short for several years. In 2004, I up and decided to shave my head bald, and haven’t looked back once since then. I must say it’s immensely pleasant in many, many ways - the list deserves its own thread.

I decided to try removing everything waist up, and also have not looked back. But keeping it gone takes some time during which I can think about it a lot, and I get to wondering exactly why we need all of it.

As far as the hair keeping your skin warm on your arm, you’re absolutely right. That’s why we get “goosebumps” or gooseflesh, it changes the hair density to trap a different amount of air. Kind of like a wetsuit in the water, but hair is like a drysuit.

However, I’m normally too hot and prefer to be cooler, so if removing the hair means I stay cooler, that’s all the better for me.

Pedant
As far as increased tactile sensation goes - I have found that hair can make me think that I have a bug crawling on me, when really I don’t. Also, when I don’t have hair (say, on my arm) and I get the sensation of a bug crawling on me, I can be more sure that the cause of the sensation is a bug, and take more immediate and direct action. When I had hair on my arms constantly, the sensation would leave me wondering, “is that a bug? Or does it just feel like one?” Now I know. And I don’t think I’m less sensitive to them.

Retention of body smells - yeah, that’s tasty.

Visual sexual flag - personally, I think I’m sexier without the chest and back hair. My girlfriend says she doesn’t care either way, but in ways without words she lets me know she prefers it gone. I was never wookie-like, but I don’t know many women who like to grab hold of a thick shag of fur while making love.

Retention of dingleberries … well someone else in this thread mentioned protecting your body holes from foreign objects … this would be the opposite of that?

Home for lice (and other critters) - thanks, I can do without.

sunstone mentions sebaceous glands. Is the gland actually associated with the hair, or do hairless parts of the body produce oil also? I know the skin under the eyes doesn’t produce oil, but the palms of my hands (which, believe it or not, are completely hairless) seems smooth and soft, so I assume it produces some oil. Also, my nose makes plenty of oil, but only grows hair on the inside.

As far as the condition of the skin once the hair is gone: I find the skin is in great condition. Especially my scalp. Dandruff is a thing of the past, for instance. Oh, I’m sure it produces the same amount of dead skin it always has, it just disappears immediately as opposed to hanging around, clinging to the bottoms of the shafts of hair, causing itching and flaking. As far as the oil goes, it still produces plenty of that. In fact, probably too much - I wipe it off a few times a day.

Skin on arms and torso is great, also. I must say, it feels refreshing to get dry so quickly after a shower. The feeling of cleanliness is unsurpassed. Soft clothing feels so much better.