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(CNN) - Write on Google “when the women started to….” and one of the first search suggestions that appears is "when did the women begin to shave?"
The answer goes back centuries. Hair removal, or the fact of removing hair from the body, has long modeled gender dynamics, has functioned as a class significant and has also defined the notions of femininity and "the ideal body."
However, in its most recent evolution, body hair has been welcomed by a growing number of young women who are turning this source of social shame into a sign of personal strength.
The increase in gender fluidity, the movement of a positive body image and the increasing inclusion of the beauty sector have contributed to the new wave of hair.
"This has been deeply stigmatized - it still is - and a component of shame has been added," Heather Widdows, a professor of global ethics at the University of Birmingham in Great Britain and author of "Perfect Me: La, said in a telephone interview. beauty as an ethical ideal ”. "The removal (of body hair) is one of the few aesthetic traditions that have gone from being a beauty routine to a hygienic one," he added.
And he stressed: “Today, most women feel they should be shaved. As if they had no other choice. There is something deeply charged in that, although perceptions are slowly changing. ”
From ancient Egypt to Darwin
A young woman undergoes a hair removal process at the Batiderm Institute of Electrolysis in New York on November 4, 1938. (Credit: Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images)
Hair removal in the body was not established as a mandate for women until the early twentieth century.
Before that, removing body hair was something both men and women did - even since the Stone Age, then in ancient Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire - using seashells, beeswax and other hair removal methods. In these ancient times, as Victoria Sherrow writes in Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History, lack of hair was primarily considered as a way to keep the body clean. In ancient Rome they also associated it with the class: the softer your skin was, the purer and superior you were.
In the Middle East, as well as in East and South Asia, hair removal was used all over the face. Although, the brows (also known as uniceja) were actually attractive in both sexes, and were often accentuated with kohl pencil.
Hair removal with thread, to remove hair from the face, has long been a traditional beauty procedure, as seen in this image in a Taipei night market. First, a thin thread is bent, then twisted and rolled over the areas that you want to shave, pulling the hair at the level of the follicle. (Credit: Yeung Kwan // LightRocket / Getty Images)
In Persia, hair removal and the definition of eyebrows were an indicator of adulthood and marriage for women, and were mainly reserved for that occasion. While in China, body hair was considered normal for a long time, and even today women face much less social pressure to shave.
The same goes for other countries in Asia: although hair removal has become a routine for many young women on the continent, shaving or trimming pubic hair, for example, is not as common as in the West.
In fact, in Korea, pubic hair was associated for a long period with a sign of fertility and sexual health, so much so that in the middle of the 2010s it was reported that some Korean women underwent pubic hair transplants to add more hair in that area.
Now, Europeans were not always so obsessed with a hair-free body.
During the Middle Ages, good Catholic women were expected to grow their hair as a sign of femininity, while keeping it hidden in public. The face was the only place where the hair was considered unsightly: the fourteenth-century ladies tore the hairs off their foreheads to push back the birth of the hair and make faces more oval in appearance. When Elizabeth I came to power in 1558, she made eyebrow waxing fashionable.
At the end of the 18th century, European and North American women still did not consider hair removal essential, although when French barber Jacques Perret invented the first razor for men in 1760, some women also used it.
It was not until the late nineteenth century that women on both sides of the Atlantic began to include hair removal as an integral part of their beauty routines. The modern notion that body hair is unfeminine can be traced until 1871 with Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Man, according to Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca Herzig.
In Paris, a patient undergoes a laser hair removal session. (Credit: BSIP / Universal Images Group / Getty Images)
Darwin's natural selection theory associated body hair with "a primitive ancestry and an atavistic return to earlier and 'less developed' forms," wrote Herzig, a professor of gender and sexuality studies at Bates College in Maine. In contrast, having less hair on the body, the English naturalist suggested, was a sign of being more evolved and sexually attractive.
As Darwin's ideas became popular, other medical and scientific experts of the nineteenth century began to relate the presence of hairs with "sexual inversion, disease pathology, madness and criminal violence," according to Herzig. Interestingly, these connotations were mostly applied to women's body hair, not that of men: not only due to evolutionary arguments, but also, the author stressed, to apply a “social gender control” on the growing role of Women in society. Bringing women to think that they should be free of hairs to be considered worthy of attention was a heteronormative way of controlling their bodies, and inherently themselves, through shame, Widdows explained.
In the early 1900s, white and middle-class white American women increasingly regarded hairless skin as an indicator of femininity, while female body hairs were associated with something disgusting. So eliminating them offered "a way to separate from the most vulgar, lower class and immigrant people," wrote Herzig.
A female "need"
During the first decades of the twentieth century, changing fashion - with sleeveless dresses that exposed the skin - further popularized body hair removal in the United States.
In 1915, Harper's Bazaar was the first magazine for women to publish a campaign dedicated to hair removal in the armpits ("a necessity", as described). That same year, the Gillette men's razor company launched the first razor marketed specifically for women, the Milady Décolletée. His publicity read: "A beautiful addition to Milady's bathroom table - and one that solves a shameful personal problem."
The short hems of the 30s and 40s, as well as a shortage of nylon stockings during World War II, meant that more and more American women began shaving their legs as well. And the arrival of the bikini to the US In 1946 it also led shaving companies and consumers to focus on cutting and shaping their lower regions.
Italian actress Sophia Loren in a white embroidered dress while posing for a photographer in Venice, 1955. (Credit: Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche / Getty Images)
In the 1950s, when Playboy arrived at the newspaper and magazine posts (his first issue came out in 1953), widely shaved women promoting lingerie set a new standard of sensuality. By 1964, 98% of Americans between the ages of 15 and 44 regularly shaved their legs. The wax strips and the first laser hair removal were also released at that time, although the latter was quickly abandoned due to its harmful effects on the skin before returning to the market decades later.
"And still, shaving was far from being as extreme as it is today," Widdows said. “In the late 60s and 70s, body hair was nothing unusual, even in Playboy. At that time there was also a second wave of feminism and the spread of hippie culture, which rejected hairless bodies. For many women, body hair was a symbol of their struggle for equality. It didn't look like unnatural, not yet, ”he said.
That change, Widdows said, began in the following decades, with the growing popularity of waxing, pornography and an increasingly explicit pop culture. In 1987, seven sisters from Brazil (known as the J Sisters) opened a salon in New York City that offered the so-called "Brazilian", a complete waxing in the genital region. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Naomi Campbell began to become the "Brazilian." The masses followed suit.
"Removing body hair went from being 'expected' to be imposed as a rule," Widdows explained. “Being shaved came to be seen as the only 'natural' and clean way to present the body. Except it really isn't like that. ”
With advertising and the media further promoting the ideal of totally hairless bodies, the idea that female hair is disgusting has only grown. In turn, the methods to achieve the absence of hairs have become more precise: the last four decades have seen the rise of electrolysis, pulsed light and the most advanced laser technology.
"Anything associated with the 'abject' - that which we expel from our cultural worlds to define ourselves - arouses disgust, shame and hostility almost by definition," Herzig told CNN in an email. “The visible hair on the female body certainly tends to be treated as abject today. It is worth noting that these are ideas about cleanliness, contingent social norms, rather than actually eliminating 'dirt'. Most hair removal practices tend to introduce new opportunities for abrasion and infection, ”he said.
Welcoming body hair
In 2008, Breanne Fahs, a professor of studies on women and gender at Arizona State University, assigned her students the task of growing body hair and then writing an article reflecting on the experience. Fahs then expanded the exercise to include the men of the course, who were asked to shave their legs. The project continues until today.
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo wearing her uniceja. (Credit: Everett / Shutterstock)
"The activity has brought to the fore the cultural inevitability of female hair removal," Fahs said in a telephone interview. "Over the years, those who have participated in the exercise have shared quite consistent problems: a deep feeling of shame, fighting with their own confidence and even social ostracism," he said.
“There have also been cases of heterosexism and homophobia: this idea that letting your leg hair grow automatically implies that you are queer, or shaving means that you are a gay man. Women often do not realize how much society, family and friends influence what we do with our bodies. And how much of what we think is an election, that 'I choose to shave', has been taught and applied for generations, ”he added.
But Fahs has also seen feelings of empowerment, rebellion and anger emerging from the project. “Especially in the last two years, following the elections and the #MeToo movement, there has been a deeper awareness of the restrictions surrounding women's bodies, feminism, gender and sexuality, and a willingness to reject everything, or at least leave the comfort zone, ”he said.
And not only are Fahs students.
A new population of young women is welcoming body hair, especially on Instagram. The phenomenon has also reached the magazines. In the September issue of Harper's Bazaar, actress Emily Ratajkowski posed with underarm underarms (a 180 degree turn for publication from her first messages against armpit hair). Youtuber Ingrid Nilsen and artist Halsey also showed her body hair.
Recently launched women's shaver brands are also defending female hairs and encouraging positive conversations on the subject. Flamingo shaver, from the popular Harry's toilet line, emphasizes the right to choose whether or not you shave with advertising messages such as "We are a growth option."
View this post on Instagram
Primping ✨
A post shared by Billie (@billie) on Dec 27, 2019 at 6:45 am PST
The Billie razor venture, established in 2017, is another company that markets the idea of choice. Instead of showing perfectly shaved models, typical of advertisements in this market, their campaigns showed various groups of women shaving, combing their tufts of armpits or lying on the beach in a bikini with different levels of hairiness.
"For a long time, advertising has only reinforced the taboo on the subject," Billie co-founder Georgina Gooley said in a telephone interview. “We wanted to recognize that women have body hair, show it and say that shaving is an option. If you want to keep your body hair, we celebrate that. And if you want to remove it, it's fine too. ”
Photographer Ashley Armitage, who worked on Billie's campaigns and ingeniously represents body hair on her Instagram account, agrees. "Body hair is a personal choice," he wrote in an email. "Shaving, shaving or letting it grow are valid options, and it all depends on the individual."
View this post on Instagram
Why is body hair only seen as acceptable when it's on a man? Let's normalize body hair on all genders ❤️
A post shared by ASHLEY ARMITAGE (@ladyist) on Dec 29, 2019 at 11:27 am PST
The idea that not shaving is also an option may not seem revolutionary when it comes to normalizing body hair. But it could be an important step to reformulate the issue.
"I think more women are realizing how body hair is deeply connected with gender and power," Fahs said. "The emotional nature of what causes body hair in people has enormous potential as a tool for activism and social change," he concluded.
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