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Why do women shave their legs and under their arms but men don’t?
And do women shave their legs because of World War II?
So lots of folks find excessive hairiness (with the exception of the hair on our heads)
to be a bit off putting.
And this rule seems to be doubly true for women in places where shorty shorts and bare
arms are the standard of summer time.
But have you ever stopped to wonder why?
I mean: if our mammalian bodies are busy growing hair here, there, and everywhere, then what
makes the hair we trim in certain areas so darn special?
And when did adult women start to believe that being silky smooth all over was more
appealing than our naturally furry forms?
Let’s dive right in, because this is going to get hairy but hopefully not sticky.
Our first question for today is:
When did men and women start removing their body hair?
And why?
So even though removing body hair stretches back centuries, this practice isn’t universal.
Shaving customs have varied across cultures as well as coming into and out of fashion
at various points in time.
There are some who note that Ancient Egyptians may have pioneered the hair removal game with
tweezers made from shells and waxes made of sugar among other techniques.
Straight razors (the shaving tool preferred by hipsters and Sweeney Todd) have been around
for several hundred years in one form or another, with its most current form tracing back to
the mid 18th century.
And today, certain Jewish sects, and certain followers of Islam and Sikhism prevent followers
from shaving their bodies or men from shaving their beards for religious reasons.
According to Professor Rebecca Herzig in her book Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, early
colonists in the Americas made a seemingly important note that Native American men and
women they encountered practiced hair removal.
But the reason behind men like Thomas Jefferson noting whether or not Native American men
had beards was, surprises surprise, some super whacky, super inaccurate race science entrenched
in European customs about class.
18th century Enlightenment theories dictated that men who could grow beards were “civilized”
and those with less body hair were prone to “feebleness.”
Herzig notes that these thoughts were steeped in humoral theory from the classical age,
which was all about your internal balance and nothing about being funny.
It was believed that the four humours (phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile) needed
to remain in balance, and that this was reflected in a person’s “complexion” which included
their external hairiness and skin tone.
But all of this was a bunch of hooey since I don’t know about you but I can’t remember
the last time my physician said my yellow bile was out of step with my phlegm and causing
me to grow a beard.
Other hair removal trends through the ages included homemade remedies used by women in
the US during the 18th century and a rise in depilatory creams in the mid 19th century
(often made outside of the home in early industrial factories).
But those creams turned out to be less than popular since they often resulted in burns
and other skin issues for women who used them to fight the fuzz.
Although companies tried to rebrand those same creams as “Eastern” beauty remedies
to make them sound more enticing and less horrible.
So people have plucking and priming for a while, but this wasn’t because hairlessness
was a universally accepted beauty standard for men or for women.
So that brings us to our next question:
When did shaved legs and underarms become a beauty standard specifically linked to women?
Well up until the turn of the 20th century in US, women having body hair wasn’t exactly
breaking news.
But that was in part because many of the fashions favored by women up until that point covered the
majority of their real estate, and it doesn’t make a ton of sense to shave your legs and
underarms if you’re covered from head to toe.
Though removing unsightly facial hair for women was not completely unheard of.
But when those ladies started to show more skin, we started to see the rise of a crafty
razor salesman named King Camp Gillette.
In 1915, Gillette created the first razor marketed specifically to women, the Milady
Décolleté razor, which was released alongside a bunch of clever and tricky ad campaigns
that linked the latest fashions to hairless women.
Buying a dress without sleeves or a skirt with a high hem?
Then the message was to go out and get a razor to compliment your new ensemble.
And a lot of these ad campaigns also focused on making shaving sound less like something
that happened at the barber shop, and more like an intimate part of every well-heeled
woman’s daily grooming practices.
The message to remove underarm hair caught on pretty quickly with the rise of sleeveless dresses.
But even though hems were higher, stockings remained a popular alternative for ladies
who weren’t into shaving their whole leg.
But it wasn’t until WW2 that leg shaving became a bigger trend for women in the US and Europe.
In 1939, the DuPont company released the first waves of nylon stockings, which provided women
with a cheaper and more durable option for hosiery than their silk and rayon predecessors.
But the new nylon wasn’t just good for covering legs, it also played a crucial role in WW2
when it was used to create parachutes.
As a result, Allied forces like the US and UK heavily rationed nylon throughout the war
effort, which left legs truly exposed for the first time.
Also the UK implemented nationwide clothing rationing, with people getting vouchers for
new items based on the difficulty of making the item, the availability of the material
it was made from, and the age of person in need of clothing (for example fast growing
children received a special allowance).
Pamphlets like 1943’s “Make Do and Mend” encourage everyone to mend old clothing, create
stylish patches on holes, and knit new items out of the yarn picked from old ones including
knit underwear.
But despite the shortages and regulations, there was still encouragement from Allied
governments for women to boost morale on the battlefield by maintaining beauty standards at home.
So what’s a gal to do if she’s being told on the one hand to conserve costs while on
the other she’s being told that letting her appearance slide could actually cause
the war to go worse?
Because not shaving is apparently as bad as the second WORLD war?
Well this led to a variety of solutions including, you guessed it, shaving your legs to stay
smooth, a style that was popular also with the pin up models of the day.
But women weren’t ready to abandon stockings altogether.
This led to a few interesting solutions to give the appearance of nylon clad legs, including
drawing a line up the back of your legs to mirror stockings or darkening the skin of
your legs with tinted lotions and gravy browning, which is a dark molasses and spice mixture
that’s popular in England and used to darken gravies.
Side fact: also popular in the former British colonies since I grew up seeing this in my
mom’s spice cabinet.
But despite the final (kind of delicious) option of gravy legs as a fashion statement,
this only worked if the legs were already smooth.
As time went on and styles continued to get more brief (think mini skirts, high cut shorts,
and itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikinis) shaving for women continued to spread
and women’s hair continued to receded until we thought it was the norm.
So how does it all add up?
Well although having hairy legs may seem outside of the cultural norm in the contemporary US,
our aversion to hair on women’s legs and underarms it’s actually a relatively recent development.
And a development that has more to do with wartime rationing and sneaky ad campaigns
than it does with hair growth being inherently bad.
And we have King Camp Gillette, a guy with a name that sounds like a cross between a
comic book villain, a character from a fast food restaurant, and a sleepaway camp for
the well-to-do, to thank for that.
Because he convinced generations of otherwise reasonable folks that there’s a difference
between razors made for men and women, and marketed a version of women’s razor plated
in 14 karat gold so that it would make a great gift.
Because history.So why not?
So what do you think?
Anything to add to this history of hair removal timelines?
And this episode includes a special shout out to Liz Gro on Youtube who suggested that
we make an episode on the history of gender and shaving.
Thanks for your suggestion Liz and remember to keep those comments coming since this
our second fan pick episode and I'd love to do more!
So drop those questions below, be sure to follow origin of everything on Facebook and
subscribe on Youtube and I’ll see you next week!
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Hey guys!
Thanks for all of your comments on last week’s episode on the history of birth control!
Ross Parlette on Youtube writes that in his small army unit in the late 1960s there was
a “morale indicator” that took note of AWOL stats and VD stats among other things.
Although we’ll all be relieved to hear that both of those numbers in his small unit were actually zero.
So thanks for the fun fact that links army history to the spread of birth control Ross.
Brianspo on Youtube asks if we can do an episode on the history of the minimum wage?
So this is a great topic suggestion since it’s a topic we should all learn more about.
And this list of fan suggestions that I've been keeping for a couple of weeks now is getting pretty lengthy
but I’m adding this one to the list!
Also we have a fan pick episode coming up in a couple of week’s so stay tuned for
the big reveal to see if your idea was chosen!
I’d also like to give a special shout out to Amy Nadine Ellis and Karen Yellin on Facebook
and Peppermintfoxy, Tragoudistros.MPH and Isabella Shimizu on Youtube for all of your comments!
That’s it for now and we’ll see you here next week!