When women started to shave in history?

Syzygys

Syzygys

As a mother, I am telling you
Valued Senior Member
...and why women with hair is considered to be gross nowadays???

My guess is that it started with a guy at Gillette who decided that half of the population is just not enough for costumers and started to promote women shaving. I still wonder about the time....

OK, after due diligence:

"A while ago, a reader asked us why leg hair doesn't "grow forever." Now, years later, we revisit this prickly subject. So, lather up, dear readers! It's time to shave off unsightly ignorance and replace it with silky-smooth wisdom.

The Straight Dope answered a similar question several years back with help from an article entitled "Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture" by Christine Hope. According to Hope's research, businesses began "encouraging" American women to shave their underarms around 1915, when sleeveless fashions became popular. Harper's Bazaar featured an ad stating: "Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair." Yet another revenue stream made possible by human insecurity.

The war against nature's leg warmers came a bit later, as changes in clothing allowed women to display more than just an ankle. According to Hope, convincing women to shave their legs was more challenging, so advertisers pulled out all the stops. "Some advertisers as well as an increasing number of fashion and beauty writers harped on the idea that female leg hair was a curse."

The Straight Dope offers another theory for the surge in leg shaving in the 1940s -- Betty Grable. The pin-up's epic legs may have started a trend. Flaunting one's gams was suddenly "in." Since short shorts and woolly limbs don't mix, it was goodbye to hairy legs and hello to something equally pleasant -- razor burn."

But this is just about legs and underarms....
 
Damn I was close although it was Wilkinson, not Gillette:

"It all began with the May, 1915 edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine that featured a model sporting the latest fashion. She wore a sleeveless evening gown that exposed, for the first time in fashion, her bare shoulders, and her armpits.

A young marketing executive with the Wilkinson Sword Company, who also made razor blades for men, designed a campaign to convince the women of North America that:

(a) Underarm hair was unhygienic (b) It was unfeminine.

In two years, the sales of razor blades doubled as our grandmothers and great grandmothers made themselves conform to this socially constructed gender stereotype. This norm for North American women has been reinforced by several generations of daughters who role-modeled their mothers. "

http://www.quikshave.com/timeline.htm
 
For centuries any kind of female hair was considered sexy. It depends onwhat you grow up with....
 
In an unrelated vein, when did toilet paper and toothbrushes really "catch on"?
 
Catch on and being used are different. Toothbrushes were invented thousands of years ago, but I think it caught on more with the invention of plastic....
 
When is it ok for a woman to stop shaving? I really don't want to be 80 yrs old with a tremor trying to shave my legs.
 
Depilation has been there forever. The Egyptians still use the halawa they used then. And its still the best method there is.
 
For beauty, you have to suffer: (from the brief history of shaving)

"1940s: WORLD WAR II -

In the U.S., some women are painfully removing hair from their bodies by rubbing sandpaper all over their legs and underarms, due to severe domestic materials shortages caused by the war."
 
Well if they hadn't, we'd all be speaking German! Singing Deutschland, Deutschland, U-ber Al-les!
 
i dont get it
the thing about hair is.,..it gets in the way, it requires maintenance, bald aint that bad...

why perpetuate a hereditary artifact?
depilation makes eminent sense

skin rules

wow
explanations tend towards aat
 
The Romans used to have all of their hairs (excluding the head) plucked at the baths. When I took latin I had to translate some famous letter some guy wrote about the screams he would hear coming from the baths when they were plucking pubic hairs. He lived above the bath house.
 
CutsieMarie89 said:
when they were plucking pubic hairs.
Click to expand...

So we finally reached my original point of interest. So when did they start to shave there? At Roman times? I assume it was just the Romans or maybe just the rich Romans and sure during the dark ages they didn't shave it....
 
CutsieMarie89 said:
The Romans used to have all of their hairs (excluding the head) plucked at the baths. When I took latin I had to translate some famous letter some guy wrote about the screams he would hear coming from the baths when they were plucking pubic hairs. He lived above the bath house.
Click to expand...
Egyptians too even.

Syzygys said:
Damn I was close although it was Wilkinson, not Gillette:

"It all began with the May, 1915 edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine that featured a model sporting the latest fashion. She wore a sleeveless evening gown that exposed, for the first time in fashion, her bare shoulders, and her armpits.

A young marketing executive with the Wilkinson Sword Company, who also made razor blades for men, designed a campaign to convince the women of North America that:

(a) Underarm hair was unhygienic (b) It was unfeminine.

In two years, the sales of razor blades doubled as our grandmothers and great grandmothers made themselves conform to this socially constructed gender stereotype. This norm for North American women has been reinforced by several generations of daughters who role-modeled their mothers. "

http://www.quikshave.com/timeline.htm
Click to expand...
That's correct. Hominids and primates, especially women, have always been self-conscious about their hair - observe our cousins the baboons for example. In 1915 the sleeveless dress became popular and that same year the Harpers ad was published.
 
Syzygys said:
So we finally reached my original point of interest. So when did they start to shave there? At Roman times? I assume it was just the Romans or maybe just the rich Romans and sure during the dark ages they didn't shave it....
Click to expand...

Well pretty much all of the advancement that been made during "ancient times" were lost to the people of the middle ages. I believe it was part of typical Roman bathing routine. Anytype of hair that was not on the head was unattractive to them, so they removed all of it. I guess they found it to similar to the enemies they had developed around the mediterranian sea. Like people from the middle east tend to have quite a bit of excess body hair. So maybe it was a form of displaying that they were better than those around them. I don't know.
 
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