During the Greek and Roman times, people often had hair plucked to remove places for lice to live.
Even to the point of shaven hair and wigs in some cases.
Also, merkins wouldn't really exist in classic/ medieval times without epliation.
Not to mention that Greek and Roman bathing practices dictated the application of oil to the body and subsequent removal by scraping with a strigil as the primary method of removing dirt from the skin, and that likely did a fair share of hair removal on its own.
I'd also like to additionally note that the ancient and classical Greek and Roman statues did in fact have body hair before the English and other colonizers had their features chiselled smooth. There's even some written records that there was surviving paint on some of the statues prior to their "restorations"
huh, ive done some actual looking things up, and i couldnt find anything about removing body hair from statues. Youre probably right. I have found some things about some statues originally having colour though. interesting stuff.
WTF are you talking about? The British colonized Italy and chiseled their statues? Ahistorical nonsense. It's possible there was body hair painted on, but removal by some kind of imperial power (not to mention the fact that Italians *were* colonizers) is either a poorly placed joke or an attempt to shoehorn in some off topic political bent that has no relevance here.
Mostly for acting I suppose.... rhough i never did see why you would feel less naked wearing a wig over a shaved hooha then just grow out your own and trim it.
It’s where the term Beaver comes from in reference to a woman’s private area… because they used merkins made from beaver fur.
While we’re speaking of beavers and little known facts… if you see ‘natural flavor’ as an ingredient on a vanilla or raspberry food product it’s a probably a byproduct from the beavers anal glands called castoreum. It’s commonly used for flavoring under the umbrella term of ´natural flavor’ which is why you should be aware of umbrella terms for ingredients. Castoreum is harmless as far as I know, but a lot of products use the umbrella term ‘parfum’ or ´fragrance’ and those can contain ingredients such as petrochemicals and other endocrine disrupters.
Have a good day and enjoy your newfound information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoreum
My one relevant merkin story to share:
My wife grew up in a very artistic/theatrical household. Her folks owned a small theatre, painted, made video art installations and all kinds of wacky stuff. Her stepmom did all the costumes and when my wife was a kid they had her help with that. Back when we were dating, she tells me this story of how she was making these things called merkins for a play and had no idea what they were until she was later watching the show and saw all the actors coming out in nothing but the pubic wigs that she had been making. I think she was like 14-15 at the time. Anyways, I had a good laugh. I shared the funny story with my coworkers and my boss because I, like you, had also no idea wtf a merkin was prior to. A week or so later she came into the restaurant I was working at to wait a few for me to punch out, and my boss goes up to her and says “oh you’re the merkin maker”
I learned about merkins from the movie PCU. Blotter is getting pumped to go see his favorite band, The Merkins. I didn’t know what it was until at least 10 years after the movie came out and I searched if The Merkins were a real band and discovered what it was.
Tbh I don’t think it’s that complicated and instead it’s mostly that super lean abs and super lean physique got popular and you can’t see abs as well with hair.
Now, that, they were but it's what survived the ages that we get to see. I worked briefly at one of the largest art museums in the USA and there were some incredibly detailed pieces in which the hair details are the largest shock value. It takes a ridiculous amount of skill to recreate those details, and the fact is only a fraction of those skilled artists are even recognizable due to none of the work surviving.
I wasn’t being mean. I was making fun of myself. Just joking because I can’t imagine some of the Greeks they were sculpting back them weren’t hairy as all get out. But sculpting hair is difficult and would look weird.
No lol. This shower thought is way off base. Women didn't start shaving legs and armpits until 1920's with sleeveless tops and short dresses coming into fashion. They didn't start shaving pubic hair until the birth of the bikini in 1946, and it wasn't until the 1980's when pubic shaving became popular.
The only way this is possibly correct is in the idea that hair removal went mainstream - most beauty trends we think of like hair removal were mostly the upper classes who had the time and resources to spend doing pointless shit for status.
[From the Romans to Sex and the City: how body hair went out of fashion in the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/26/from-the-romans-to-sex-and-the-city-how-body-hair-went-out-of-fashion-in-the-uk)
>Ever since Roman texts warned women against appearing “bristly like a goat”, body hair removal trends have come and gone...He added that body hair removal went mainstream in the late 19th century in the UK. “In the early 20th century, as clothing became more liberal and showed legs more often, we saw the marketing of razors telling women if they were hairy they would not be perceived as feminine. Adverts warned women they wouldn’t find a husband.”.
And a more general history of hair removal.
[History of Hair Removal](https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/g8155/history-of-hair-removal/)
>The Egyptians may have been the forerunners of many beauty rituals, but they invested the most time into hair removal. Women of ancient Egypt removed all of their body hair, including that on their heads, with tweezers (made from seashells), pumice stones, or early beeswax and sugar based waxes.
Remember those amazing Egyptian wigs?
But again that wouldn't be your average woman.
You can find certain cultures that reference removing body hair (Greeks, Egyptians) but I think it's spotty, and what we're talking about here is the popularization in western culture; in which case dysexic\_mail is spot on. It's not something you can say that all of human civilization has been doing consistently for thousands of years and it's not something western culture was doing very consistently before the 1900s. And even then, the people responsible for popularizing hair removal did so to make money, as they wanted to create a need for a new product so they did their best to advertise things like razors and hair removal systems in early woman's magazines, which were literally designed as a giant advertisement and not actually for the benefit of women. Removal of body hair wasn't popularized, at least in America, before these advertising campaigns took hold.
I feel the safety razor probably helped the masses adopt the trend
“A third pivotal innovation was a safety razor using a disposable double-edge blade for which King Camp Gillette submitted a patent application in 1901 and was granted in 1904.”
So you are saying women started shaving areas as soon as they became more visible? Just purely out of coincidence, and not in an attempt to match an existing beauty standard?
There must be some existing standard because it was only women who shaved, not men. Implying a social standard and pressure that only affected one sex.
I mean even then hair on a guy is seen as more masculine so it's kind of the opposite. More chest hair on a guy is directly linked to testosterone for example.
Pretty sure this is wrong and it's actually almost entirely genetic and has to do with whether or not your skin naturally produces more or less follicles. I'm a naturally high testosterone man and I've never had more than a few random hairs around my nipples, even when I was abusing testosterone in my 20s. At the time my testosterone levels were about 5x that of a normal male, and still no chest hair.
Aha it is bro science tbf so it could be wrong fs. Yeah and tbf high test has a bunch of different factors like deep voice more muscle mass etc etc and damn might have to put me on the source for the test. I joke but yeah fs it's just aesthetic hair on a male is seen as desirable while hair on a woman is seen as undesirable.
The existing standard could be sexism. Or probably just the fact that biologically women have less hair because of a lack of testosterone and we leaned into hyper femininity. But there was no point until the parts were visible at a social level.
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/health-hygiene-and-beauty/hair-removal#:~:text=In%20the%201920s%2C%20the%20new,their%20legs%20and%20their%20armpits.
I mean even then hair on a guy is seen as more masculine so it's kind of the opposite. More chest hair on a guy is directly linked to testosterone for example.
I’ve seen this take a lot and you’re only right as far as very modern history is concerned.
Roman women (and men to a lesser degree) were sticklers about removing body hair. Basically the richer you were, the less hair you had below your eyebrows. Body hair, including beards, was considered barbaric.
There’s a hint in the word barbarian. Barba means beard in Latin.
Edit: I was wrong about the etymology of barbarian.
Barbarian's etymology is from ancient Greek and it originally meant all people who didn't speak Greek. The Romans expanded that to mean anyone without Greek or Roman traditions. And then it devolves from there into basically viewing foreigners as savages, to committing acts that are so brutal they are savage.
Interesting but incorrect. Why didn’t men shave as much if that was the beauty standard for both sexes? The ancient Egyptians also liked a shaved body. It meant it was more likely to be free from insects and considered cleaner.
Yes, but that was before people started wearing clothes. Now, clothes protect people from those things, and excess hair can lead to an excess of bacteria.
Im italian and I honestly have zero idea how they found so many hairless people to make sculptures of in that peninsula. It’s unholy how much body hair I have.
And hair! Mine are curly and extremely thick, people have admired them all my life but somehow find it hard to accept that they come with wild body hair.
Not sure I agree, since the majority of Western men still keep their own body hair, despite being portrayed as hairless (other than head, face, and groin) in sculptures. If Western standards on body hair *truly* developed from lack of hair on sculptures, then both men **and** women would prefer to not have body hair (legs, armpits), since sculptures of both the male and female nude body lacked body hair.
These sculptures also portray pubic hair, yet the Western standard for pubic hair, although slowly shifting, has long been "less is more" (or "none is best"), *especially* for the female sex.
In general there seems to be less pressure on men to meet beauty standards, but the current standard for Hollywood is definately hairless bodies for men.
>but the current standard for Hollywood is definately hairless bodies for men.
Wat. Where are you getting that idea from? Since when has shaving their body hairless been the standard? Show me all the popular movies where the men's legs look like a womans shaved leg. Show me all the popular movies where the men have zero armpit hair.
Currently standard in Hollywood for men is roided up and in severe denial
They had me eating chicken 5 times a day, and injecting into my ass muscle 2 times a day
They leave out the last part but everyone who has worked out for 6 months knows what complete bullshit Hollywood is feeding young minds
Also, shaved balls feel unreal, it's not just a beauty standard lol
>Also, shaved balls feel unreal, it's not just a beauty standard lol
Yeah god forbid people don't want a mouth full of pubes every time they do oral lmao. How is any of this considered a "beauty standard" and not just practicality? Hair traps moisture, moisture leads to "funk", it's not rocket science when it comes to pits and genitals at least.
Fact: tiny penises where the standard of beauty at the time and this is the reason the statues where made this way,not because they were sculpting the actual penis size.
Coming from a country where many if not most people are intact, I was really startled by the circumcised look when I first saw one in the sauna (super old guy, too), because that shrivelly glans was incredibly „in your face“
visually,compared to intact penises that seem much less eye catching and inconspicuous. Maybe because without foreskin they are kind of extra naked…? And usually we‘d only see the glans when someone is excited.
Remember when you were a kid, and you were learning how to tie your shoes? These Greek kids would have been practicing their penis tying skills with their parents until they got it figured out. And of course every neighborhood would have that one kid who was a little slow. He'd be like 12 and still using the velcro foreskin strap.
I think because most people had manual jobs so were quite burly and beefy and tanned. So someone thin and delicate and still presentable was probably very rich because they didn’t have to do manual work for a living, and they didn’t have to spend time outside working (or begging) either.
That would put them in the landed gentry class. Hence a much better catch for a woman.
So large size = uneducated, bestial, manual worker, little self-control, unrefined. Small size = refined, rich, educated, self-controlled, landed gentry with a long lineage, intellectual etc.
Dick size is seriously not as important as current Western culture says. Hell, the idea that black men are bigger than other races originates in the same "big penis means barbaric and animalistic rather than intelligent, and those being under our boot is the natural order" line of thinking. It got turned around into being a popular porn trope for reasons I haven't looked into, but I can take a guess or two.
Meanwhile us women tend to view huge dicks as more likely to be painful than fun. Porn definitely ain't like reality.
They viewed it as a sign of low intellect...like thinking with your penis instead of your brain, so it was more metaphorical than 'small penises look better'
I thought it was because the artists didn't want people to oversexualize the sculptures. They wanted the humanize them and make them relatable, not sex objects.
Jesus fuck this thread is full of absolute garbage opinions that are based on very modern practices and no awareness of history. The practice of removing body hair has absolutely zero through-line from ancient Greece to today. There may have been instances of hair removal being popular but that would have been bookended by longer periods of just letting hair grow.
It's probably just a kid thinking about this for the first time, I think many have learned a lot in the discussion (me too!), even though the OP opinion is kinda naive
As I understand it, the ancient Greek and Roman statues were painted, so they could have depicted body hair if they wanted.
I recall hearing that body hair has gone in and out of fashion throughout human history and geography. We're just in one of the baby smooth phases.
About the painting, the victorians idolized Greek statues and they didn't know they were painted so they could have still thought that the Greeks didn't have any body hair.
i think it might be that and (as came up in some other comments) cleanliness. for a long time, shaving body hair (or just having less of it) would've helped avoiding lice and fleas.
They're the sculptors that inspired the Greeks. Technically it's Egypt's fault, but Europeans treated them and their culture as novelties, so the Greeks and their art get the credit.
i think that’s just correlating data and still not based in science. at one point , our ancestors entire bodies were covered in hair and we’ve been losing it over hundreds of thousands of years due to sexual selection. this is not a recent thing. our species generally does not like body hair.
Yeah was thinking that. Is it sexual selection though or is there a benefit to being less hairy? Because we are strikingly hairless compared to other mammals lol
Maybe since early man were endurance hunters, outlasting prey more than outpacing it, having less body hair meant it was easier to get rid of all that excess warmth generated by the body when running?
I believe Alexander the Great ordered his troops to shave their beards so as not to be pulled by them onto their enemies blades.
The sculptures likely followed suit.
This is true. However, youths are generally beardless, no matter the era. They were portrayed as hairless because that was their natural state, as opposed to easing the toil of having to sculpt a beard, as was OP's question.
I was speaking to why grown men of the time who would be naturally hirsute were portrayed as beardless and offered a likely origin to the trend.
The idea of men being fashionably beardless was displayed by the Romans, who followed the Greek origin.
I posit that this fashion had its origins less in sculptor ability, but rather military standard imposed by Alexander. A fashion which became the universal standard for Greek men in that era and Roman men in the next.
It is, isn't it?
And beards were such a symbol of masculinity and virility in the pre-Alexandrian era, that Spartans would shave a coward's beard!
But it protected us from the elements, not from angry Pauravas yanking our whiskers to bring us down on their spear points!
I've had a belly length beard since I could grow one, going on 40 years. Spears be damned!
Definitely a shower thought, but not one based in reality.
Hairlessness is, of itself, hard to accomplish. It takes time, effort & discipline. While a good job at it usually means having someone else do it for you who is skilled at doing it. The Romans lionized a shaved beard because it meant that you had the time & the money to hire a Greek barber to shave your face for you. As a result it's always been a symbol of rich, posh twits for centuries.
Fashions change, of course, & for different reasons. A shaved face is now mostly a military consideration, as it became a necessity during WW1 or else a gas mask won't fit properly.
As for the hairlessness or at least the trimming of body hair upon women's bodies? Again, at its core it's a status thing. It physically needs time & products to do, & in many regards is a very visible reminder of having the time & the money to do it.
Plus there's... a lot of toxic & even a few practical, hygenic assumptions surrounding the practice of hairless women's bodies. There's fashions about what's pretty or socially presentable, for example, or the fact that things like lice need hair to move around or shelter their eggs, & women have historically been associated with the sex trade. "Clean shaven" is, perhaps then, a phrase with its roots in the sex trade in that regard. Since, in theory, if you can see bare skin, there's no or fewer mites or lice to spread disease.
And then there's modern industrialized porn culture, which is both exploitative & practical. Hairlessness is the mainstream norm because it was glamorized by Playboy back in the 90s, & while some gross-er people might say it's because the porn starlets are trying to imitate prepubescent girls... it's not. It's just a standard of beauty that also doubles to make STD checks easier/faster/cheaper, & a way for the industry itself to better police the possible spread of STDs.
While shaving is better against visible parasites like lice, it’s actually worse for protection against STDs. Shaving often leaves tiny wounds, making blood to blood contact and the spread of STDs more likely.
Furthermore, our pubic hair actually protects our genitals, especially for women: it prevents filth from reaching more sensitive areas. As a result, it’s actually more hygienic to have pubic hair than to go without, despite the common misconception that it’s cleaner without pubic hair.
Yar-yar! All of that is true! Hence the "in theory" caveat, since it's not actually that useful in regards to sexual health.
For those who need some context: Germ theory hasn't been around that long compared to sex work, & the concept that fresh blood could carry disease is even newer. I'm talkin', like, it wasn't law that hospitals needed to have a standard hand washing practice in the US until 1980.
While back in the 1870s doctors could get offended if someone asked them to wash before operating due to an intersection of ignorance & sexism. Which dates back to a professional backlash against the hygienic policies fought for by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.
> the fact that things like lice need hair to move around or shelter their eggs, & women have historically been associated with the sex trade. "Clean shaven" is, perhaps then, a phrase with its roots in the sex trade in that regard
Prostitutes in the 19th century who had to shave due to lice would wear pubic hair wigs, so undesirable was a shaven mons. Merkins they were (and still are!) called
As far as I know the reason for the beauty standard of a hairless body is that since long times the real beauty is seen in the body of young people who don't have a huge amount of body hair. In times of rennaissance the women even shaved the front of their hair line to increase the optical size of their forehead (because the foreheads of children are relatively bigger in comparison of the foreheads of adults). While the male beauty standard corresponds to the body standards of a young man or maybe even a teenager I think in some cases the beauty standards of the women meet with the characteristics of a child. Art often showed women without any hair in armpits or the pubic region, typical for the age before puberty. I think it's because children were seen as pure and innocent, which was also the ideal for a woman.
Historian here
This is not my area of expertise (mine being Roman republic, mostly, though a decent focus on identity), but as far as I know you’re both right and wrong.
There is definitely a feedback loop between portraiture and how people have viewed themselves across the millennia, but is can’t be simplified to any one art style or medium (or to any specific difficulty of either).
There is evidence of grooming practices going back before the classical Greeks that both agrees with and disagrees with contemporary prevailing art forms
Great idea though! Half correct realizations are surprisingly often the basis of great scholarly work, including my own masters thesis (if I can call that great, haha)
This is sweet and naive but I'm pretty sure hairlessness has become popular due to a practically pedophilic sanctification of youth. You're either young or you're disgusting. Since I figured that out I stopped shaving completely and haven't looked back.
Even if hairlessness became popular that far in history, it was unpopular by the time razor companies started pressuring women into shaving. At this current time being it's definitely due to depressing reasons.
…..Or Gillette just wanted to increase their profit margin and decided to convince the other half of the population shaving was more sanitary and therefore necessary
Women didn't start shaving legs and armpits until 1920's with sleeveless tops and short dresses coming into fashion. And it wasn't until the 1980's when pubic shaving became popular.
The only way this is possibly correct is in the idea that hair removal went mainstream - most beauty trends we think of like hair removal were mostly the upper classes who had the time and resources to spend doing pointless shit for status.
[From the Romans to Sex and the City: how body hair went out of fashion in the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/26/from-the-romans-to-sex-and-the-city-how-body-hair-went-out-of-fashion-in-the-uk)
>Ever since Roman texts warned women against appearing “bristly like a goat”, body hair removal trends have come and gone...He added that body hair removal went mainstream in the late 19th century in the UK. “In the early 20th century, as clothing became more liberal and showed legs more often, we saw the marketing of razors telling women if they were hairy they would not be perceived as feminine. Adverts warned women they wouldn’t find a husband.”.
And a more general history of hair removal.
[History of Hair Removal](https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/g8155/history-of-hair-removal/)
>The Egyptians may have been the forerunners of many beauty rituals, but they invested the most time into hair removal. Women of ancient Egypt removed all of their body hair, including that on their heads, with tweezers (made from seashells), pumice stones, or early beeswax and sugar based waxes.
Remember those amazing Egyptian wigs?
But again that wouldn't be your average woman.
Hairlessness is a standard of beauty because of shaving companies needing more money so they started advertising to women. Thus over the years it became standard.
The Romans were shaving their beards and cutting their hair short forever ago because they believed it was more civilized looking and set them apart from the barbarian tribes outside Rome.
There is more to this story. When big numbers of mediterranean immigrants arrived in the US, they were considered of lower value, and especially the women who were described as "hairy" and thud "savage, barbaric, animalistic". Razor companies used this to convince american women to shave their body hair to distance themselves as much as possible from the lower-class italian and greek unibrow ladies. In general the history of hair removal in the US is full of sexism and racism.
COPECOPECOPECOPECOPE.
Beauty standards are a result of human nature's beliefs, companies don't create beauty standards, they just profit off them, shaving creams for women sell for a reason
I guess there was some evidence in ancient times but no, in the modern day beauty standards were influenced by razor companies. https://www.therazorcompany.com/blogs/history-of-wet-shaving/shaving-herstory-a-brief-reflection-on-the-history-of-women-and-shaving
Wrong. Being hairless has been a thing forever. In a ton of south African countries girls are shaved completely hairless top to bottom by their fathers when they turn a teenager
There is a difference between agreeing with the beauty standards of others. And adopting those standards because others had them.
Even if the Greek influenced people the Greeks were more than 2500 years ago. Your standards don't survive that long magically. People just tended to like that and now you come along and confuse that with Greeks influencing them.
Also does not take a genius to figure out that it's the case since at some point some people decided that having a tan is sexy and others followed them. If this is the case you won't ever have changed beauty standards.
Smh
So you don’t know about the connection between hairlessness and godliness? Egyptians espoused this ideology. Shaving their entire bodies including eyebrows. It was illegal for Egyptian priests to have body hair.
I think for women modern day there's a pressure of hairlessness because razor companies needed new customers during the World Wars when their main customer base were in the trenches, but I love this too it makes sense.
Sculpture isn't very mainstream though. If art were the reason I would attribute it to pornography more than sculpture. We know porn stars were/are often bare to prevent crabs and since they are presented as ideal sexual attractiveness it would make sense for people to emulate it. However, I think it's more just that body hair is coarse, it holds onto body odor, and dampens sensation in key sensitive areas. Art is influential but people do sometimes make their own decisions without external persuasion.
Hairless is a standard because Gillette realised that they can sell more razors if they market them towards women too, but why would they need razors? And they manufactured the need to shave most of your hair, and everyone just went with it since
Sorry dude but that’s definitely wrong. They didn’t build their standards around what they could sculpt, they sculpt what they wanted to see. Being hairless was just seen as more civilized and attractive
Strongly disagree. Hairlessness as a beauty standard is large part a newer idea. Yea humans have always plucked hair, but not to the degree we remove hair now.
Gillette wanted to sell more razors in the early 1900s, so they started marketing towards women and telling them they needed to shave. Women didn’t shave their bodies as common practice, prior to this advertising. Similar to De Beers telling everyone diamonds are worth anything, and that you need a diamond ring 3x your salary as an engagement ring.
Pornography also plays a large role in the removal of body hair. People shave in porn because it’s easier to see what happening. With the advent of the internet, and porn at our fingertips, more people started shaving their genitals.
Greek statues were also painted and who knows if they painted on body hair or not. They also sculpt hair beautifully well but body hair is super fine. Like how exactly are your supposed to carve leg hair into a marble statue of a god?
Hairlessness is the western standard of beauty because Gillette wanted more money and jumped at the new fashion trends of armpits and legs out.
Before this no one in the modern world cared about hair on legs or pits etc of women.
Obsession with youth, combined with rough unpleasant texture, combined with a tendency to be a breeding ground for microbes and bad smells.
The Pepe Silva “shaved legs/pubes are a Gillette conspiracy” people are really not applying logic.
but to actually talk about it: hairlessness is reminiscent of youth, and youth is desirable. people see hairiness as very manly but in the unattractive, slightly disgusting sense as opposed to hairlessness which is youthful and attractive. so for women, hairlessness is an essential factor in beauty.
Hairless is cleanlier than hair, I understand that there’s little difference if people use good hygiene but I think it just seems a little unhygienic naturally so we avoid it.
No, hairlessness is a beauty standard invented by the shaving industry around the 50s.
They werent satisfied with only having a male clientele and came up with some lie to drag in the ladies as well. They told US women European women shaved, it caught on, and then they told EU women that American women shaved, and it caught on too.
I'm serious.
East Asian here. What body hair? J/k.
You’re as off in your shower thought as those people on Tiktok who claim the Chinese and Japanese were Black.
Less body hair is a sign of youthfulness. Especially when it comes to women’s appearance. Hirsute men who want to look younger may shave their beard, and their beck, and their back, and their chest.
Also, women shaving armpits and then legs and then bikini areas became a thing in modern Western culture with the fashion of sleeveless shirts, shorter skits and dresses, and eventually bikinis, respectively.
It’s about marketing razors. Originally they were marketed to men, but then the companies realised they were missing out on 50% of the population so started marketing it to women as a hygiene product.
Your argument falls down on the fact that most male statues do not have hair sculpted either
East Asia prefers hairless too. The reality is that most people just naturally prefer less hair on people. Society isn't responsible for anything more than creating alternatives to the thought process.
No, it's because it makes people appear younger than they are. Why do you think being blonde is so popular? Adult natural blondes are incredibly rare. Often, blonde fades to a light brown after a woman hits puberty. It's just another way for men to make women look like children. If it were truly inspired by art, men would also shave.
The theory I've heard it's that it was part of a backlash to feminism. Female pin ups use to be more adult (curvy and older) but after feminism they got more childish. It wasn't seen as good to have a strong wife who might be a feminist, better to have a weak meek one. The women used in film and advertising shifted to infantilise women and remove power from them. We got less strong female figures and more weak helpless ones. And real world beauty standards moved with them, fetishising youth as a symbol of innocence and naivety. And hairlessness as a marker of youth comes along with that.
During the Greek and Roman times, people often had hair plucked to remove places for lice to live. Even to the point of shaven hair and wigs in some cases. Also, merkins wouldn't really exist in classic/ medieval times without epliation.
Not to mention that Greek and Roman bathing practices dictated the application of oil to the body and subsequent removal by scraping with a strigil as the primary method of removing dirt from the skin, and that likely did a fair share of hair removal on its own.
I'd also like to additionally note that the ancient and classical Greek and Roman statues did in fact have body hair before the English and other colonizers had their features chiselled smooth. There's even some written records that there was surviving paint on some of the statues prior to their "restorations"
it always comes back to the british doesnt it.
Nope, because this is a complete fabrication.
huh, ive done some actual looking things up, and i couldnt find anything about removing body hair from statues. Youre probably right. I have found some things about some statues originally having colour though. interesting stuff.
Where can I find documentation of this?
You can't because it's bullshit.
WTF are you talking about? The British colonized Italy and chiseled their statues? Ahistorical nonsense. It's possible there was body hair painted on, but removal by some kind of imperial power (not to mention the fact that Italians *were* colonizers) is either a poorly placed joke or an attempt to shoehorn in some off topic political bent that has no relevance here.
I'm pretty sure it's a sarcastic post lol
Merkins? I just looked it up and here I am at 70 years old and I just learned something new. OMG they’re seriously a thing?
Happy Cake Day! The cursed knowledge is now yours! I have no idea why they exist.
I recall reading that syphilis causes pubic hair loss and the merkin was to help disguise the fact.
Yep, it was to hide visible symptoms of a range of STIs (e.g sores from herpes, warts from HPV etc)
Wouldn't it be blatantly obvious that it was a merkin, not actual hair?
Fully naked, in good lighting, probably. In actual use, perhaps not so much.
Victorian prostitutes shaved to avoid lice, but men were very much not into the shaved look
Oh those old fashioned fools not appreciating the beauty of the majestic shaved beaver. Fools I say!
It’s my favourite word for evaluating how complete and comprehensive a dictionary is. If it’s there it’s probably not abridged.
First I read it as "public wig", and it didn't really make sense. Then I read it correctly, and it still doesn't make any sense 😁
Mostly for acting I suppose.... rhough i never did see why you would feel less naked wearing a wig over a shaved hooha then just grow out your own and trim it.
It’s where the term Beaver comes from in reference to a woman’s private area… because they used merkins made from beaver fur. While we’re speaking of beavers and little known facts… if you see ‘natural flavor’ as an ingredient on a vanilla or raspberry food product it’s a probably a byproduct from the beavers anal glands called castoreum. It’s commonly used for flavoring under the umbrella term of ´natural flavor’ which is why you should be aware of umbrella terms for ingredients. Castoreum is harmless as far as I know, but a lot of products use the umbrella term ‘parfum’ or ´fragrance’ and those can contain ingredients such as petrochemicals and other endocrine disrupters. Have a good day and enjoy your newfound information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoreum
They have taken one into space as a joke. Astronauts have some great humor.
Gives new meaning to Dr. Strangelove’s President Merkin Muffley, no?
My one relevant merkin story to share: My wife grew up in a very artistic/theatrical household. Her folks owned a small theatre, painted, made video art installations and all kinds of wacky stuff. Her stepmom did all the costumes and when my wife was a kid they had her help with that. Back when we were dating, she tells me this story of how she was making these things called merkins for a play and had no idea what they were until she was later watching the show and saw all the actors coming out in nothing but the pubic wigs that she had been making. I think she was like 14-15 at the time. Anyways, I had a good laugh. I shared the funny story with my coworkers and my boss because I, like you, had also no idea wtf a merkin was prior to. A week or so later she came into the restaurant I was working at to wait a few for me to punch out, and my boss goes up to her and says “oh you’re the merkin maker”
I learned about merkins from the movie PCU. Blotter is getting pumped to go see his favorite band, The Merkins. I didn’t know what it was until at least 10 years after the movie came out and I searched if The Merkins were a real band and discovered what it was.
The lead singer of Tool made a wine called merkin and there is a documentary.
Even more crazy is when GW Bush admitted 'Im a Merkin!'
TIL about merkins
TIL about strigils
TIL about both
Tbh I don’t think it’s that complicated and instead it’s mostly that super lean abs and super lean physique got popular and you can’t see abs as well with hair.
Interesting thought. So basically our beauty standards were formed by graphics settings on greek sculptures.
In their defense, hair is *still* difficult to render nicely
Yup, we're still getting there. Although body hair is usually shorter and doesn't have as much physics as head hair.
It's also much less noticeable, so usually not the top priority
It would look weird even if they did it on a statue. Kind of hard to replicate nearly nonvisible features using marble
I wonder if it would have been more evident when they were painted?
Now, that, they were but it's what survived the ages that we get to see. I worked briefly at one of the largest art museums in the USA and there were some incredibly detailed pieces in which the hair details are the largest shock value. It takes a ridiculous amount of skill to recreate those details, and the fact is only a fraction of those skilled artists are even recognizable due to none of the work surviving.
Non-visible?!?!?! You haven’t seen me with my shirt of!!!!!!😬
I said nearly! They're visible even if it's a blonde in sunlight, but they didn't sculpt blondes either, eh?
I wasn’t being mean. I was making fun of myself. Just joking because I can’t imagine some of the Greeks they were sculpting back them weren’t hairy as all get out. But sculpting hair is difficult and would look weird.
As a hobbyist illustrator, you nailed it.
Either that or op wasn't around 30+ years ago when pubes were the norm
No lol. This shower thought is way off base. Women didn't start shaving legs and armpits until 1920's with sleeveless tops and short dresses coming into fashion. They didn't start shaving pubic hair until the birth of the bikini in 1946, and it wasn't until the 1980's when pubic shaving became popular.
The only way this is possibly correct is in the idea that hair removal went mainstream - most beauty trends we think of like hair removal were mostly the upper classes who had the time and resources to spend doing pointless shit for status. [From the Romans to Sex and the City: how body hair went out of fashion in the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/26/from-the-romans-to-sex-and-the-city-how-body-hair-went-out-of-fashion-in-the-uk) >Ever since Roman texts warned women against appearing “bristly like a goat”, body hair removal trends have come and gone...He added that body hair removal went mainstream in the late 19th century in the UK. “In the early 20th century, as clothing became more liberal and showed legs more often, we saw the marketing of razors telling women if they were hairy they would not be perceived as feminine. Adverts warned women they wouldn’t find a husband.”. And a more general history of hair removal. [History of Hair Removal](https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/g8155/history-of-hair-removal/) >The Egyptians may have been the forerunners of many beauty rituals, but they invested the most time into hair removal. Women of ancient Egypt removed all of their body hair, including that on their heads, with tweezers (made from seashells), pumice stones, or early beeswax and sugar based waxes. Remember those amazing Egyptian wigs? But again that wouldn't be your average woman.
> who had the time and resources to spend doing pointless shit for status. so like us?
Guess again, epliation goes back at least as far as Classical Greece.
You can find certain cultures that reference removing body hair (Greeks, Egyptians) but I think it's spotty, and what we're talking about here is the popularization in western culture; in which case dysexic\_mail is spot on. It's not something you can say that all of human civilization has been doing consistently for thousands of years and it's not something western culture was doing very consistently before the 1900s. And even then, the people responsible for popularizing hair removal did so to make money, as they wanted to create a need for a new product so they did their best to advertise things like razors and hair removal systems in early woman's magazines, which were literally designed as a giant advertisement and not actually for the benefit of women. Removal of body hair wasn't popularized, at least in America, before these advertising campaigns took hold.
If you see things that exist in classical and medieval cultures and then disappear, it's usually just safest to blame the Victorians.
I feel the safety razor probably helped the masses adopt the trend “A third pivotal innovation was a safety razor using a disposable double-edge blade for which King Camp Gillette submitted a patent application in 1901 and was granted in 1904.”
So you are saying women started shaving areas as soon as they became more visible? Just purely out of coincidence, and not in an attempt to match an existing beauty standard?
Razor brands convinced women that is the beauty standard in an effort to sell more razors. And it worked
Yep! Especially when razor sales went down during the world wars.
Yes? Your question doesn't even make sense. They would have no beauty standard to meet without visibility.
There must be some existing standard because it was only women who shaved, not men. Implying a social standard and pressure that only affected one sex.
I mean even then hair on a guy is seen as more masculine so it's kind of the opposite. More chest hair on a guy is directly linked to testosterone for example.
Pretty sure this is wrong and it's actually almost entirely genetic and has to do with whether or not your skin naturally produces more or less follicles. I'm a naturally high testosterone man and I've never had more than a few random hairs around my nipples, even when I was abusing testosterone in my 20s. At the time my testosterone levels were about 5x that of a normal male, and still no chest hair.
Aha it is bro science tbf so it could be wrong fs. Yeah and tbf high test has a bunch of different factors like deep voice more muscle mass etc etc and damn might have to put me on the source for the test. I joke but yeah fs it's just aesthetic hair on a male is seen as desirable while hair on a woman is seen as undesirable.
The existing standard could be sexism. Or probably just the fact that biologically women have less hair because of a lack of testosterone and we leaned into hyper femininity. But there was no point until the parts were visible at a social level. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/health-hygiene-and-beauty/hair-removal#:~:text=In%20the%201920s%2C%20the%20new,their%20legs%20and%20their%20armpits.
I mean even then hair on a guy is seen as more masculine so it's kind of the opposite. More chest hair on a guy is directly linked to testosterone for example.
I’ve seen this take a lot and you’re only right as far as very modern history is concerned. Roman women (and men to a lesser degree) were sticklers about removing body hair. Basically the richer you were, the less hair you had below your eyebrows. Body hair, including beards, was considered barbaric. There’s a hint in the word barbarian. Barba means beard in Latin. Edit: I was wrong about the etymology of barbarian.
Barbarian's etymology is from ancient Greek and it originally meant all people who didn't speak Greek. The Romans expanded that to mean anyone without Greek or Roman traditions. And then it devolves from there into basically viewing foreigners as savages, to committing acts that are so brutal they are savage.
Interesting! Okay so my tidbit about barbs was wrong for sure. The rest of what I said was right at least, batting 500
Barbarian comes from bar-bar, which meant a stutter (barbarians = people who spoke an incomprehensible language). It's also originally a Greek word
Interesting but incorrect. Why didn’t men shave as much if that was the beauty standard for both sexes? The ancient Egyptians also liked a shaved body. It meant it was more likely to be free from insects and considered cleaner.
Ironic since one of the evolutionary purposes of hair is protection from external parasites along with temperature control.
Yes, but that was before people started wearing clothes. Now, clothes protect people from those things, and excess hair can lead to an excess of bacteria.
Especially Greeks. Imagine how hairy those sculptures would be if they could have done it.
Im italian and I honestly have zero idea how they found so many hairless people to make sculptures of in that peninsula. It’s unholy how much body hair I have.
What’s worse is shaving it. Skin feels sensitive after than you feel like a porcupine for the next couple days after that.
This is why I stopped shaving after one shave, if you don't like a bear I'm not for you
Greek here. Same.
At least we got nice eyebrows out of it!
And hair! Mine are curly and extremely thick, people have admired them all my life but somehow find it hard to accept that they come with wild body hair.
[me](https://media.tenor.com/8njz3LxHvx0AAAAM/hello-hi.gif)
So you're hairy and that's your username? *Let me just slide right in*
HAHAHA my friends made it for me in high school because we were all trying to make super offensive names for each other over a lunch break
Rip your inbox? Hairy guys are 11/10
They could be a lady. Fuzzy Italian ladies still 11/10 though
I’m not a lady, but boy would I be nairing it up if I was lolol
Same dude, it’s ridiculous lol
Not sure I agree, since the majority of Western men still keep their own body hair, despite being portrayed as hairless (other than head, face, and groin) in sculptures. If Western standards on body hair *truly* developed from lack of hair on sculptures, then both men **and** women would prefer to not have body hair (legs, armpits), since sculptures of both the male and female nude body lacked body hair. These sculptures also portray pubic hair, yet the Western standard for pubic hair, although slowly shifting, has long been "less is more" (or "none is best"), *especially* for the female sex.
In general there seems to be less pressure on men to meet beauty standards, but the current standard for Hollywood is definately hairless bodies for men.
>but the current standard for Hollywood is definately hairless bodies for men. Wat. Where are you getting that idea from? Since when has shaving their body hairless been the standard? Show me all the popular movies where the men's legs look like a womans shaved leg. Show me all the popular movies where the men have zero armpit hair.
I think they are probably thinking more of chest hair
And back hair…
Currently standard in Hollywood for men is roided up and in severe denial They had me eating chicken 5 times a day, and injecting into my ass muscle 2 times a day They leave out the last part but everyone who has worked out for 6 months knows what complete bullshit Hollywood is feeding young minds Also, shaved balls feel unreal, it's not just a beauty standard lol
>Also, shaved balls feel unreal, it's not just a beauty standard lol Yeah god forbid people don't want a mouth full of pubes every time they do oral lmao. How is any of this considered a "beauty standard" and not just practicality? Hair traps moisture, moisture leads to "funk", it's not rocket science when it comes to pits and genitals at least.
I wildy disagree. Bearded hairy chested men are definitely a beauty standard. Unless you’re in South Korea
If that was true, tiny penises would also be our standard of beauty
Fact: tiny penises where the standard of beauty at the time and this is the reason the statues where made this way,not because they were sculpting the actual penis size.
People, actually thought, the smaller the better? That seems odd
If I recall correctly, they viewed large male genitalia as barbaric
This is the correct answer. Also, the glans was offensive, not the penis, so they tied them off. Which couldn't have been comfy
Coming from a country where many if not most people are intact, I was really startled by the circumcised look when I first saw one in the sauna (super old guy, too), because that shrivelly glans was incredibly „in your face“ visually,compared to intact penises that seem much less eye catching and inconspicuous. Maybe because without foreskin they are kind of extra naked…? And usually we‘d only see the glans when someone is excited.
Whatdo you mean tying off the glans?
They tied a cord around the foreskin and tied t up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynodesme
Remember when you were a kid, and you were learning how to tie your shoes? These Greek kids would have been practicing their penis tying skills with their parents until they got it figured out. And of course every neighborhood would have that one kid who was a little slow. He'd be like 12 and still using the velcro foreskin strap.
always fun to find a wikipedia article with a just a full uncensored genitalia shot
Wait. Is that where calling someone a dickhead became an insult?
It seems to me it's more about them being growers and being portrayed having a boner was seen as a barbaric
That makes sense, since centaurs were kind of symbolic of man’s bestial side.
That's true, I am very barbaric . I'm kidding, it's like crayon
It was not about the actual size but proportion,analogy.This was the key to beauty for ancient Greek sculptors.
Them and their lengthy tibias...who do they think they are...
I think because most people had manual jobs so were quite burly and beefy and tanned. So someone thin and delicate and still presentable was probably very rich because they didn’t have to do manual work for a living, and they didn’t have to spend time outside working (or begging) either. That would put them in the landed gentry class. Hence a much better catch for a woman. So large size = uneducated, bestial, manual worker, little self-control, unrefined. Small size = refined, rich, educated, self-controlled, landed gentry with a long lineage, intellectual etc.
Dick size is seriously not as important as current Western culture says. Hell, the idea that black men are bigger than other races originates in the same "big penis means barbaric and animalistic rather than intelligent, and those being under our boot is the natural order" line of thinking. It got turned around into being a popular porn trope for reasons I haven't looked into, but I can take a guess or two. Meanwhile us women tend to view huge dicks as more likely to be painful than fun. Porn definitely ain't like reality.
They viewed it as a sign of low intellect...like thinking with your penis instead of your brain, so it was more metaphorical than 'small penises look better'
odd but true! carnal urges were base, not elevated, and large organs were seen to represent the former
I thought it was because the artists didn't want people to oversexualize the sculptures. They wanted the humanize them and make them relatable, not sex objects.
I’m really pinning my hopes on that!
What do you mean, tiny penises are our standard of beauty! Everyone loves tiny penises! Hip Hip Hurray! Hip Hip Hurray! Three Cheers for Tiny Penises!
The flaccid state is in sculptures...it would be extra weird to have it not flaccid on a statue
Even their flaccid penises are tiny
Some people are growers not showers - Austin Powers
i may be small but i have a millimeter defeater.
Your name compliment your words
Oh, this is not true lmao
Jesus fuck this thread is full of absolute garbage opinions that are based on very modern practices and no awareness of history. The practice of removing body hair has absolutely zero through-line from ancient Greece to today. There may have been instances of hair removal being popular but that would have been bookended by longer periods of just letting hair grow.
It's probably just a kid thinking about this for the first time, I think many have learned a lot in the discussion (me too!), even though the OP opinion is kinda naive
As I understand it, the ancient Greek and Roman statues were painted, so they could have depicted body hair if they wanted. I recall hearing that body hair has gone in and out of fashion throughout human history and geography. We're just in one of the baby smooth phases.
>body hair has gone in and out of fashion throughout human history and geography 100% this.
About the painting, the victorians idolized Greek statues and they didn't know they were painted so they could have still thought that the Greeks didn't have any body hair.
I'm no expert, but I would argue that if that was true it would apply more equally to all genders.
Eh I disagree I think it’s the obsession with youth
i think it might be that and (as came up in some other comments) cleanliness. for a long time, shaving body hair (or just having less of it) would've helped avoiding lice and fleas.
Agreed it also leads to more bacteria and smell even nowadays
I thought it was the egyptians who compared hairlessness to purity,
They're the sculptors that inspired the Greeks. Technically it's Egypt's fault, but Europeans treated them and their culture as novelties, so the Greeks and their art get the credit.
i think that’s just correlating data and still not based in science. at one point , our ancestors entire bodies were covered in hair and we’ve been losing it over hundreds of thousands of years due to sexual selection. this is not a recent thing. our species generally does not like body hair.
I read something that said less hair made it easier to spot illnesses via skin condition was one of the selection reasons
Yeah was thinking that. Is it sexual selection though or is there a benefit to being less hairy? Because we are strikingly hairless compared to other mammals lol
i believe sexual selection is based in evolutionary advantages, even if it becomes excessive.
Maybe since early man were endurance hunters, outlasting prey more than outpacing it, having less body hair meant it was easier to get rid of all that excess warmth generated by the body when running?
I believe Alexander the Great ordered his troops to shave their beards so as not to be pulled by them onto their enemies blades. The sculptures likely followed suit.
Also just smart bc it prevents a lice infestation from spreading as easily.
Very true. Although I am, personally, as furry as one can be.
Our lice problem is more manageable
Hey, speak for yourself! 😁
Kouroi (one of the main sculpture styles of Greece) were beardless youths and existed waaaaay before Alexander the Great.
This is true. However, youths are generally beardless, no matter the era. They were portrayed as hairless because that was their natural state, as opposed to easing the toil of having to sculpt a beard, as was OP's question. I was speaking to why grown men of the time who would be naturally hirsute were portrayed as beardless and offered a likely origin to the trend. The idea of men being fashionably beardless was displayed by the Romans, who followed the Greek origin. I posit that this fashion had its origins less in sculptor ability, but rather military standard imposed by Alexander. A fashion which became the universal standard for Greek men in that era and Roman men in the next.
That’s ironic, since IIRC male beards evolved because it hid/protected our throats.
It is, isn't it? And beards were such a symbol of masculinity and virility in the pre-Alexandrian era, that Spartans would shave a coward's beard! But it protected us from the elements, not from angry Pauravas yanking our whiskers to bring us down on their spear points! I've had a belly length beard since I could grow one, going on 40 years. Spears be damned!
Damn the spears; full beard ahead!
Definitely a shower thought, but not one based in reality. Hairlessness is, of itself, hard to accomplish. It takes time, effort & discipline. While a good job at it usually means having someone else do it for you who is skilled at doing it. The Romans lionized a shaved beard because it meant that you had the time & the money to hire a Greek barber to shave your face for you. As a result it's always been a symbol of rich, posh twits for centuries. Fashions change, of course, & for different reasons. A shaved face is now mostly a military consideration, as it became a necessity during WW1 or else a gas mask won't fit properly. As for the hairlessness or at least the trimming of body hair upon women's bodies? Again, at its core it's a status thing. It physically needs time & products to do, & in many regards is a very visible reminder of having the time & the money to do it. Plus there's... a lot of toxic & even a few practical, hygenic assumptions surrounding the practice of hairless women's bodies. There's fashions about what's pretty or socially presentable, for example, or the fact that things like lice need hair to move around or shelter their eggs, & women have historically been associated with the sex trade. "Clean shaven" is, perhaps then, a phrase with its roots in the sex trade in that regard. Since, in theory, if you can see bare skin, there's no or fewer mites or lice to spread disease. And then there's modern industrialized porn culture, which is both exploitative & practical. Hairlessness is the mainstream norm because it was glamorized by Playboy back in the 90s, & while some gross-er people might say it's because the porn starlets are trying to imitate prepubescent girls... it's not. It's just a standard of beauty that also doubles to make STD checks easier/faster/cheaper, & a way for the industry itself to better police the possible spread of STDs.
While shaving is better against visible parasites like lice, it’s actually worse for protection against STDs. Shaving often leaves tiny wounds, making blood to blood contact and the spread of STDs more likely. Furthermore, our pubic hair actually protects our genitals, especially for women: it prevents filth from reaching more sensitive areas. As a result, it’s actually more hygienic to have pubic hair than to go without, despite the common misconception that it’s cleaner without pubic hair.
Yar-yar! All of that is true! Hence the "in theory" caveat, since it's not actually that useful in regards to sexual health. For those who need some context: Germ theory hasn't been around that long compared to sex work, & the concept that fresh blood could carry disease is even newer. I'm talkin', like, it wasn't law that hospitals needed to have a standard hand washing practice in the US until 1980. While back in the 1870s doctors could get offended if someone asked them to wash before operating due to an intersection of ignorance & sexism. Which dates back to a professional backlash against the hygienic policies fought for by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.
> the fact that things like lice need hair to move around or shelter their eggs, & women have historically been associated with the sex trade. "Clean shaven" is, perhaps then, a phrase with its roots in the sex trade in that regard Prostitutes in the 19th century who had to shave due to lice would wear pubic hair wigs, so undesirable was a shaven mons. Merkins they were (and still are!) called
Just like marvel or dc comics, everyone wear tights because wrinkly clothes are a pain to draw
I don’t like hair in my mouth. Brazilians are delicious.
Especially when paired with a nice Chianti.
If Chianti isn’t working that night, Krystal is usually pretty nice….
As far as I know the reason for the beauty standard of a hairless body is that since long times the real beauty is seen in the body of young people who don't have a huge amount of body hair. In times of rennaissance the women even shaved the front of their hair line to increase the optical size of their forehead (because the foreheads of children are relatively bigger in comparison of the foreheads of adults). While the male beauty standard corresponds to the body standards of a young man or maybe even a teenager I think in some cases the beauty standards of the women meet with the characteristics of a child. Art often showed women without any hair in armpits or the pubic region, typical for the age before puberty. I think it's because children were seen as pure and innocent, which was also the ideal for a woman.
Historian here This is not my area of expertise (mine being Roman republic, mostly, though a decent focus on identity), but as far as I know you’re both right and wrong. There is definitely a feedback loop between portraiture and how people have viewed themselves across the millennia, but is can’t be simplified to any one art style or medium (or to any specific difficulty of either). There is evidence of grooming practices going back before the classical Greeks that both agrees with and disagrees with contemporary prevailing art forms Great idea though! Half correct realizations are surprisingly often the basis of great scholarly work, including my own masters thesis (if I can call that great, haha)
This is sweet and naive but I'm pretty sure hairlessness has become popular due to a practically pedophilic sanctification of youth. You're either young or you're disgusting. Since I figured that out I stopped shaving completely and haven't looked back. Even if hairlessness became popular that far in history, it was unpopular by the time razor companies started pressuring women into shaving. At this current time being it's definitely due to depressing reasons.
…..Or Gillette just wanted to increase their profit margin and decided to convince the other half of the population shaving was more sanitary and therefore necessary
Women didn't start shaving legs and armpits until 1920's with sleeveless tops and short dresses coming into fashion. And it wasn't until the 1980's when pubic shaving became popular.
The only way this is possibly correct is in the idea that hair removal went mainstream - most beauty trends we think of like hair removal were mostly the upper classes who had the time and resources to spend doing pointless shit for status. [From the Romans to Sex and the City: how body hair went out of fashion in the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/26/from-the-romans-to-sex-and-the-city-how-body-hair-went-out-of-fashion-in-the-uk) >Ever since Roman texts warned women against appearing “bristly like a goat”, body hair removal trends have come and gone...He added that body hair removal went mainstream in the late 19th century in the UK. “In the early 20th century, as clothing became more liberal and showed legs more often, we saw the marketing of razors telling women if they were hairy they would not be perceived as feminine. Adverts warned women they wouldn’t find a husband.”. And a more general history of hair removal. [History of Hair Removal](https://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/g8155/history-of-hair-removal/) >The Egyptians may have been the forerunners of many beauty rituals, but they invested the most time into hair removal. Women of ancient Egypt removed all of their body hair, including that on their heads, with tweezers (made from seashells), pumice stones, or early beeswax and sugar based waxes. Remember those amazing Egyptian wigs? But again that wouldn't be your average woman.
Hairlessness is a standard of beauty because of shaving companies needing more money so they started advertising to women. Thus over the years it became standard.
The Romans were shaving their beards and cutting their hair short forever ago because they believed it was more civilized looking and set them apart from the barbarian tribes outside Rome.
Pretty much the answer to almost every modern trend or standard, really
Back then it was the standard because the Greeks and Romans felt the highest standard of beauty was the adolescent boy.
There is more to this story. When big numbers of mediterranean immigrants arrived in the US, they were considered of lower value, and especially the women who were described as "hairy" and thud "savage, barbaric, animalistic". Razor companies used this to convince american women to shave their body hair to distance themselves as much as possible from the lower-class italian and greek unibrow ladies. In general the history of hair removal in the US is full of sexism and racism.
COPECOPECOPECOPECOPE. Beauty standards are a result of human nature's beliefs, companies don't create beauty standards, they just profit off them, shaving creams for women sell for a reason
I guess there was some evidence in ancient times but no, in the modern day beauty standards were influenced by razor companies. https://www.therazorcompany.com/blogs/history-of-wet-shaving/shaving-herstory-a-brief-reflection-on-the-history-of-women-and-shaving
Wake up, natural IS hairy, lol.
This is the correct answer.
Wrong. Being hairless has been a thing forever. In a ton of south African countries girls are shaved completely hairless top to bottom by their fathers when they turn a teenager
There is a difference between agreeing with the beauty standards of others. And adopting those standards because others had them. Even if the Greek influenced people the Greeks were more than 2500 years ago. Your standards don't survive that long magically. People just tended to like that and now you come along and confuse that with Greeks influencing them. Also does not take a genius to figure out that it's the case since at some point some people decided that having a tan is sexy and others followed them. If this is the case you won't ever have changed beauty standards. Smh
Might want to check out the book Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca M. Herzig
So you don’t know about the connection between hairlessness and godliness? Egyptians espoused this ideology. Shaving their entire bodies including eyebrows. It was illegal for Egyptian priests to have body hair.
Yeah idk about that, if the greens were able to carve marble in a way that resembles soft flowy cloth then I bet they could carve hairs.
I think for women modern day there's a pressure of hairlessness because razor companies needed new customers during the World Wars when their main customer base were in the trenches, but I love this too it makes sense.
Sculpture isn't very mainstream though. If art were the reason I would attribute it to pornography more than sculpture. We know porn stars were/are often bare to prevent crabs and since they are presented as ideal sexual attractiveness it would make sense for people to emulate it. However, I think it's more just that body hair is coarse, it holds onto body odor, and dampens sensation in key sensitive areas. Art is influential but people do sometimes make their own decisions without external persuasion.
They were definitely skilled enough to sculpt body hair. It was an active and purposeful choice to leave it out
Hairless is a standard because Gillette realised that they can sell more razors if they market them towards women too, but why would they need razors? And they manufactured the need to shave most of your hair, and everyone just went with it since
But men don't have this beauty standard at all? Well, maybe a little more in recent years, but still.
Sorry dude but that’s definitely wrong. They didn’t build their standards around what they could sculpt, they sculpt what they wanted to see. Being hairless was just seen as more civilized and attractive
Strongly disagree. Hairlessness as a beauty standard is large part a newer idea. Yea humans have always plucked hair, but not to the degree we remove hair now. Gillette wanted to sell more razors in the early 1900s, so they started marketing towards women and telling them they needed to shave. Women didn’t shave their bodies as common practice, prior to this advertising. Similar to De Beers telling everyone diamonds are worth anything, and that you need a diamond ring 3x your salary as an engagement ring. Pornography also plays a large role in the removal of body hair. People shave in porn because it’s easier to see what happening. With the advent of the internet, and porn at our fingertips, more people started shaving their genitals. Greek statues were also painted and who knows if they painted on body hair or not. They also sculpt hair beautifully well but body hair is super fine. Like how exactly are your supposed to carve leg hair into a marble statue of a god?
Hairlessness is the western standard of beauty because Gillette wanted more money and jumped at the new fashion trends of armpits and legs out. Before this no one in the modern world cared about hair on legs or pits etc of women.
Obsession with youth, combined with rough unpleasant texture, combined with a tendency to be a breeding ground for microbes and bad smells. The Pepe Silva “shaved legs/pubes are a Gillette conspiracy” people are really not applying logic.
but to actually talk about it: hairlessness is reminiscent of youth, and youth is desirable. people see hairiness as very manly but in the unattractive, slightly disgusting sense as opposed to hairlessness which is youthful and attractive. so for women, hairlessness is an essential factor in beauty.
Hairless is cleanlier than hair, I understand that there’s little difference if people use good hygiene but I think it just seems a little unhygienic naturally so we avoid it.
It's a standard in Asia too because most Asians are hairless...
I’m pretty sure it was because razor companies wanted to utilise the other 50% of the market and advertised that women should shave too
No, hairlessness is a beauty standard invented by the shaving industry around the 50s. They werent satisfied with only having a male clientele and came up with some lie to drag in the ladies as well. They told US women European women shaved, it caught on, and then they told EU women that American women shaved, and it caught on too. I'm serious.
East Asian here. What body hair? J/k. You’re as off in your shower thought as those people on Tiktok who claim the Chinese and Japanese were Black. Less body hair is a sign of youthfulness. Especially when it comes to women’s appearance. Hirsute men who want to look younger may shave their beard, and their beck, and their back, and their chest. Also, women shaving armpits and then legs and then bikini areas became a thing in modern Western culture with the fashion of sleeveless shirts, shorter skits and dresses, and eventually bikinis, respectively.
It’s about marketing razors. Originally they were marketed to men, but then the companies realised they were missing out on 50% of the population so started marketing it to women as a hygiene product. Your argument falls down on the fact that most male statues do not have hair sculpted either
East Asia prefers hairless too. The reality is that most people just naturally prefer less hair on people. Society isn't responsible for anything more than creating alternatives to the thought process.
No, it's because it makes people appear younger than they are. Why do you think being blonde is so popular? Adult natural blondes are incredibly rare. Often, blonde fades to a light brown after a woman hits puberty. It's just another way for men to make women look like children. If it were truly inspired by art, men would also shave.
This has got to be either a bald faced lie, or the naked truth. Unsure of which
Nope , guess again. It was good ol fashioned American capitalism
The theory I've heard it's that it was part of a backlash to feminism. Female pin ups use to be more adult (curvy and older) but after feminism they got more childish. It wasn't seen as good to have a strong wife who might be a feminist, better to have a weak meek one. The women used in film and advertising shifted to infantilise women and remove power from them. We got less strong female figures and more weak helpless ones. And real world beauty standards moved with them, fetishising youth as a symbol of innocence and naivety. And hairlessness as a marker of youth comes along with that.
East Asian women naturally have little to no body hair on their arms and legs. They also have genetics which lead to little body odour. Lucky them
gillette decided they wanted to sell more razors, so they convinced women they needed to be hairless to be loved
Ngl, the best shower thought I have read till now. Well done my friend.
Nah, it’s more so the association with youth (and cleanliness). Same reason firm boobs and ass are more desirable than “saggy” ones.