"The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.)…Some argue that there’s more to this than short skirts and sleeveless dresses. Cecil’s colleague Marg Meikle (Dear Answer Lady, 1992) notes that Greek statues of women in antiquity had no pubic hair, suggesting that hairlessness was some sort of ideal of feminine beauty embedded in Western culture.
If so, a lot of Western culture never got the message. Greek women today (and Mediterranean women generally) do not shave their hair. The practice has been confined largely to English-speaking women of North America and Great Britain, although one hears that it’s slowly spreading elsewhere."
To this I would point out that there are several references to this in the Talmud, a work completed over 1500 years ago. The most explicit one that I can think of offhand is where the Talmud interprets the biblical prohibition against cross-dressing as applying to any form of adornment typically done by the opposite sex. In this context the Talmud specifically prohibits men from shaving their underarm or pubic hair, as these were commonly done by women.
I hate to disagree with Cecil, but shaving body hair goes back a long time, at least to ancient Greece and Rome, and the Minoans, as well. And it wasn’t just women; one of the services provided to both sexes at public baths was shaving of all hair—including on the head (many people wore wigs then).
It was done for several reasons: because bathing and shampooing weren’t really practiced as much; because it was damn hot out, and for beauty’s sake as well.
In the middle ages, women shaved their eyebrows (see the Mona Lisa) and shaved their hairlines back, as well.
Cecil is right that shaving (or depilitating) leg and underarm hair became popular again in the West around WWI. One mistake period films like "Titanic’ make is that women did not start to shave or pluck their eyebrows till well into the 1920s.
According to a TLC show, body hair shaving was practiced in ancient Egypt, because it helped control body odour. A definite plus in a blazing hot country, thousands of years before the invention of Right Guard!
This was both men and women, however. After all, everyone sweats!
as i recall, in Egypt when a woman married, she is/was expected to shave off her pubic hair. (it’s been a while since i’ve read about this issue, so the practice may no longer be current.) i believe this was considered as an issue of sanitation. (prostitutes, on the other had, did not shave, perhaps thus adding a slightly “exotic” air to the, um, affair.)
next one who says “Fates a bitch” gets whacked with my measuring stick.
Why would a woman think that she had to cut her body hair? Obviously women either feel that they need to remove their hair to look better, otherwise they wouldnt do it.
ALso, why do women who cut their body hair complain about cutting it… And people who dont cut their body hair complain about others who do cut it??
hmmm. you aren’t pre-pubescent, perchance, are you? most body hair, after being cut, tends to produce “stubble” as it grows back. major cause of “beard burn” if you get real kissy-face on someone with a major 5 o’clock shadow. now, just imagine that same effect, spread to many other parts of the anatomy… :eek: …plus there’s the well-known phenomena of itchy grow-out. double :eek: !!
next one who says “Fates a bitch” gets whacked with my measuring stick.
