[small nitpick] - completely clean shaven is a Sphinx or a Hollywood. Brazilian is with a landing strip.
All of these also require removal of all of the hair, with the exception of the strip for the Brazilian. All hair, including the bum.
[/small nitpick]
You don’t catch the Classical sculptors making the effort to chip tiny flakes of marble off to simulate hairy legs on their female subjects. I’d wager that they didn’t find body hair on women to be particularly sexy.
Of course, a lot of them thought men were sexier than the sexiest woman. . .
Again, please?
Kids have fine peach-fuzz hair before puberty, as far as I know. When the hormones hit and start working their Miracle-Gro action in other places, the leg hair gets a bit thicker and darker.
Except for a couple of my blonde friends, who can get away without shaving because their hair’s so fine and light that you can’t tell it’s there without touching their legs. Not me. I get a 5 O’Clock shadow on my legs. Grrr.
The hell you say - “threading” and waxing yanks the hair out by the roots. It effing HURTS. If that was such a wonderful way to remove facial hair the men would be doing it. You can still get ingrown hairs and infected hair folicles. Shaving, when done properly, has little negative impact and actually exfoliates quite well.
There’s all kinds of bleaches and stuff, but at a certain point you wind up with a white 'stache or goatee or fu manchu on a gal… at which point it’s either electrolysis or shaving.
Me, I HATE HATE HATE HATE shaving. If I had my druthers I’d NEVER shave ANYTHING. (Arm hair would probably get trimmed, given that I grow abundant bushes if left unshorn). Unfortunately… well, as I tell my husband, I’ll never ask him to buy me a fur coat. If I want one, I’ll grow my own.
More unfortunately, given society’s standards, if I want to wear skirts shorter than ankle length I have to shave. Thick tights won’t work - the darn leg hairs still poke through.
>sigh<
I’m cut and FUZZY. If I was a kitten or puppy that would be a GOOD thing…
I’m assuming from the rest of your post that you meant to end with unshaven…
However, it does sound as if you don’t do enough 15-25 year old females to have a really meaningful sample.
I hope not, thinking about it.
Shaving goes back a lot longer than World War 2. We do not known when it became desirable for women to become clean shaven (nor when men first started removing their beards) because it happened so long ago in history.
First, let’s explore why people are hairless compared to the other apes in the first place. Some argue that we lost our hair to help us keep cool while running or walking out in the hot savanna, however, no other mammal has gone this route and our bare skin increases our cancer risk. A more likely explanation is that we evolved to have less hair in order to free ourselves from parasites. ( cite) Charles Darwin himself noted this phenomenia.
As for females being less hairy than males, hairiness is related to testosterone. A lowered level of body hair is a more feminine feature, and probably was sexually selected.
I recently read an article on various hair removal techniques, but I can’t locate it at the moment. I will post it here when I remember where I saw it.
Still haven’t found the article on ancient hair removal techniques in different countries, but I did find this article, which matches most of what I’ve been reading in my Anthro texts.
Europe has had hairy legs for a long time. I remember women in the 60’s having hairy legs here in the USA.
I have had the great opportunity of experiencing the 60’s when women were hairy from the legs up. Men are starting this trend now when they are clean shaven from the groin up. Men are shaving their arms and groin area for sanitary reasons like women do. Less hair equates less body material to keep clean.
In my opinion I think the trend started in the porn industry. I remember girlfriends I had in the 80’s started to shave because we men asked for it. We saw shaved everything in the porn industry and we asked for it because we liked it.
Naturalists have always been across the pond but there is a growing sector [no pun intended] interested in hair in the USA. I think there will always be both styles but shaved will prevail simply because it’s more sanitary simply because it’s easier to manage.
I was reading an article about women hair styles. Mothers would cut their hair short because it was easier to manage. Longer hair is more to manage and mothers are busy with taking care of a family and set their priorities accordingly.
A more controversial subject then hair is male baby circumcisions. The USA and Jewish males are the main sector that believes in it. Many men across the pond never get cut. There is a movement in the USA now that baby’s are left intact.
Trends certainly are interesting…
Sure did. Oops. I was typing late and sleepy and not making very much sense.
I checked my records while I was at work today. In 2005 I autopsied 49 females out of 198 autopsies performed. 12 of them were female infants. The 15-30 group involved just under half of them.
So far this year I have autopsied 15 women out of 59 total. 7 of them were 15-30.
Is that a meaningful sample?
I don’t know if it’s more or less than gatopescado has occasion to, er, examine.
I should add that I also look at the cases my colleagues perform (630 autopsies total last year), but I only make notes on the shavenness or unshavenness of the pubes of my own.
Can we just leave that post to bury itself deep in the cold, cold ground.
I should know better than to post sleepy.
I agree in places like S. Florida, woman have taken to wearing extremely tiny swimsuits-one g string style is about 1 square inch. Obviously, such small coverage means that a waxing is necessary. It seems that waxing is pretty painful-but women seem to like the results.
I wax. The pain is strong but bearable. It smarts like hell for about one second, but then the pain rapidly fades. This allows me to tolerate it. I wax because it gives satisfactory results and shaving doesn’t. I have dark hair, I need the roots out. I haven’t tried threading, I just heard that it was better than tweezing, I don’t know why.
According to my history professor, the concept of shaved legs came as a result of advertising in the early 20th century when hemlines got shorter and razor companies sold the idea to women. Just like “bad breath” wasn’t much of an issue before the cleaning companies came up with Listerine as a side product. It’s all about channeling desire.
Don’t quote me on that, though, just what he said.
That said, I probably wouldn’t shave my legs if I didn’t have to, but I would probably still shave my armpits. With armpits, it’s a bit more useful because of sweat, whereas legs are almost entirely cosmetic.
Oddly enough, though, what I’d definitely shave is, ah, a bit lower. To be fair, though, I can’t really give a valid reason other than that it feels better.