The history of depilation

The revival of the smooth, hairless body

 If you would think that a smooth and hairless body is a fad, inspired by Philips, Gilette and other shaver manufacturers, you are wrong! The women in ancient Egypt already shaved. Greek women and later Roman women followed their example. It gave them beauty, youth and innocence.

The Egyptians

For women to depilate the hair on their bodies is certainly not a fad of recent years. The ancient Egyptians did this long before. A smooth and hairless body was the standard of beauty, youth and innocence for a woman in Egypt. All over Egypt the women had smooth and hairless bodies. Except for their heads. The wife of the divine Farao set the example and every Egyptian woman took care that there was not a single hair on her body. They used depilatory creams. "Waxing" with a sticky emulsion made of oil and honey, we now call it "sugaring", was also generally accepted. See the article about "sugaring" to make this depilatory cream yourself.

Smooth is young, youthfull, innocent

The Greek adopted this ideal of smoothness. The old Greek sculptures show us that. The sculptures of women are polished, shiny and all, and there is not any pubic hair at all, whereas the sculptures of men do show pubic hair!
In "Sexual life in ancient Greece", by the Dutch author Hans Licht, we read that the Greek thought women with pubic hair ugly and especially upper class ladies removed it. The Greek found a smooth and hairless body an example of beauty, youth and innocence. The Romans did not like pubic hair either: young girls began removing it as soon as the first hair appeared. They used tweezers, which they called the "volsella". They also had a kind of depilatory cream, the "philotrum" or "dropax", the forerunner of the current depilatory creams! Waxing was also a way of depilating; this was done with resin or pitch.

Public Baths

In 1520 Bassano de Zra wrote: "The Turks consider it sinful when a woman lets the hair on her private parts grow. As soon as a woman feels the hair is growing, she hurries to the public bath to have it removed or remove it herself." The public baths all had special rooms where the ladies could get rid of their hair. Nowadays the hamams, or public baths, have special rooms for the ladies to depilate. Hamams can be found in many towns in the Netherlands.

Out of fashion

The habit of depilating fell into disuse after Catherine de Medici, then queen of France, forbade her ladies in waiting to remove their pubic hair any longer. Depilation was not done any more during the days of Queen Victoria.

Revival

In the sixties smoothness was rediscovered, however, and today it looks as if every woman removes hair somewhere on her body. It is the fashion to have smooth armpits, legs, bikini lines. Philips, Gilette and other shaver manufacturers are doing good business.

And men shave too!

Even men are getting smoother and smoother. The days are over that a "real" man was a hairy man. Perhaps inspired by the idea of unisex? Or are men allowed to develop their female side? Most athletes know the answer: have you ever seen a hairy bodybuilder?

Courtesy of "Helios", a a former Dutch naturist magazine: "The new trend: away with pubic hair!"