Shaving

I was shaving my legs this morning and I wondered why we do this? (True, not everyone does this, but many in America do.) A couple weeks ago, my sister bought one of those in home hair removal kits with the wax and strips because she was sick of having hairy legs and never had time to shave them (she has a little baby girl.) It was a huge mess! That wax stuck to everything and would not wash off with soap and water. You had to use this special liquid that came with the kit. Of course the liquid was in this teeny-tiny bottle. What would happen if you ran out?

Anyway, being the Reference librarian that I am, I wanted to see the history of clean hairless legs and pits. According to The Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History, ancient Egyptians often removed all hair from their bodies with the rich employing a barber for that purpose. Soldiers returning from the Crusades brought the fashion of Middle Eastern women who shaved their body hair to Europe. In the 1920's, women were wearing shorter skirts, so they shaved their legs. The razor companies advertised that underarm hair was unhygenic and that the pit stink attachted itself to the hairs. Remove the hairs, remove the stink. By 1964, 98% of younger women were shaving their legs (Teresa Riordan). In 2002, $8 billion dollars was spent on razors.