hairy women

[albalass]

Did Tudor women shave their legs etc? When did women start to remove their body hair? I know the Egyptians did but did it fall out of fashion?

[jno]

they used to pluck the harilines back, remove eyebrows and so on in the Middle Ages.

http://www.moderngent...istory_of_shaving.php

[thebarron]

I don't like hairy women.

[dotty.]

It kept them warm, and during the winter they were sewn into their clothes and so it didn't matter.

[Mosaic]

Only rich women in the past had any time or means to mow their hair. Eyebrows and hairlines have wandered about in terms of fashion, but its been a general thing that monobrows and moustaches have been removed by women who had tweezers and either a good friend or a good mirror - bearing in mind that glass mirrors were only owned by millionaires until the industrial age.
It's also linked to dress fashion and to social practices. Lots of german women for example don't remove armpit hair.
But to say all Egyptian women removed body hair is a bit of a myth - the rich did and could, but hair removal was a religious practice and priests generally removed every follicle including eyelashes before ceremonies. Most egyptian women would be too busy having babies and harvesting crops to worry about their leg hair.

[zzxxee]

i think it became popular in the 1920s when stars of the screen (roaring twenties) started to show more flesh as dresses got shorter ect and people copied the style of attire makeup ect

[Mosaic]

I agree Zxee - you find little lady razors appearing around the start of the movies in the 1910s-1920s. But for my money it still doesn't really explain why hair removal became not just fashionable but almost compulsory - after all, hairy pits are completely natural and there isn't a women alive who doesn't have them. I wonder if the early movie-makers were importing the art ideas that they grew up with - which would have been these women like marble statues (who in real life were just like you and I). I really wonder.
Apparently one of the Preraphaelites had only studied ancient statues and had a fit of the vapouirs whn he found out that his 16-year-old bride had pubes!

[heathfield]

I once went with a girl who was half Italian. She used to shave only one armpit. ;-)

[boxtops]

My mother used to tell a story about one of her Victorian relatives who was the same - never seen a naked woman and was completely disgusted at pubes. It's a cultural thing in some countries - my sister lived in Tehran for a while and reported that there were rows and rows of depilatories in the supermarkets, the women there take off all their body hair.

[Mosaic]

Boxtops, don't they call it 'sugaring' in the middle east? Like you say, a complete all-off from the cheekbones down...and I thin they actually use a toffee-like sugar mix in much the way as you might use wax ie paste it on, let it set, rip it off.

[thebarron]

i like them smooth

[karenmac60]

I find it kind of strange though that while shaving armpits has been considered the done thing (and you would never dream of being seen with even a bit of stubble), it now seems to be going that way for 'downstairs'. I reckon in the not so distant future it'll be as unseemly to have hair there as it is to go out with armpits like a Russian shot putter is now!

[thebarron]

i have mine removed on gfs orders