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Who decided women should shave their legs?
The Staight Dope ^ | 1/05 | cecil adams

Posted on 03/02/2005 12:56:15 PM PST by pissant

Dear Cecil:

Why do women shave their legs and underarms? When did this custom begin? If it's for hygienic reasons, why don't men to it too? Is it all a big conspiracy by the razor companies? I've heard some European women don't shave. Please clarify this mystery. --A., Chicago

Dear A.:

I knew if I procrastinated long enough on this often-asked question somebody would eventually do the legwork for me. Sure enough, Pete Cook of Chicago has sent me a 1982 article from the Journal of American Culture by Christine Hope bearing the grand title "Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture."

The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.)

The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair.

To be sure, women had been concerned about the appearance of their hair since time immemorial, but (sensibly) only the stuff you could see. Prior to World War I this meant scalp and, for an unlucky few, facial hair.

Around 1915, however, sleeveless dresses became popular, opening up a whole new field of female vulnerability for marketers to exploit.

According to Hope, the underarm campaign began in May, 1915, in Harper's Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the upper crust. The first ad "featured a waist-up photograph of a young woman who appears to be dressed in a slip with a toga-like outfit covering one shoulder. Her arms are arched over her head revealing perfectly clear armpits. The first part of the ad read `Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.'"

Within three months, Cook tells us, the once-shocking term "underarm" was being used. A few ads mentioned hygiene as a motive for getting rid of hair but most appealed strictly to the ancient yearning to be hip. "The Woman of Fashion says the underarm must be as smooth as the face," read a typical pitch.

The budding obsession with underarm hair drifted down to the proles fairly slowly, roughly matching the widening popularity of sheer and sleeveless dresses. Antiarm hair ads began appearing in middlebrow McCall's in 1917. Women's razors and depilatories didn't show up in the Sears Roebuck catalog until 1922, the same year the company began offering dresses with sheer sleeves.

By then the underarm battle was largely won. Advertisers no longer felt compelled to explain the need for their products but could concentrate simply on distinguishing themselves from their competitors.

The anti-leg hair campaign was more fitful. The volume of leg ads never reached the proportions of the underarm campaign. Women were apparently more ambivalent about calling attention to the lower half of their anatomy, perhaps out of fear that doing so would give the male of the species ideas in a way that naked underarms did not.

Besides, there wasn't much practical need for shaved legs. After rising in the 1920s hemlines dropped in the 30s and many women were content to leave their leg hair alone.

Still, some advertisers as well as an increasing number of fashion and beauty writers harped on the idea that female leg hair was a curse.

Though Hope doesn't say so, what may have put the issue over the top was the famous WWII pinup of Betty Grable displaying her awesome gams. Showing off one's legs became a patriotic act. That plus shorter skirts and sheer stockings, which looked dorky with leg hair beneath, made the anti-hair pitch an easy sell.

Some argue that there's more to this than short skirts and sleeveless dresses. Cecil's colleague Marg Meikle (Dear Answer Lady, 1992) notes that Greek statues of women in antiquity had no pubic hair, suggesting that hairlessness was some sort of ideal of feminine beauty embedded in Western culture.

If so, a lot of Western culture never got the message. Greek women today (and Mediterranean women generally) do not shave their hair. The practice has been confined largely to English-speaking women of North America and Great Britain, although one hears that it's slowly spreading elsewhere.

So what's the deal with Anglo-Saxons? Some lingering vestige of Victorian prudery? Good question, but what with world unrest, the economic crisis, and the little researchers having missed their naps, not high on Cecil's priority list. Here's hoping some all-but-thesis Ph.D. candidate will pick up the trail.

--CECIL ADAMS


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: legs
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To: exnavychick

Actually, I don't care if a gal shaves her legs or not. I had a german girlfriend years ago who didn't, and her legs still looked fine. I still think the guy who invented the short skirt deserves an award!


41 posted on 03/02/2005 2:08:51 PM PST by pissant
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To: pissant

Do you know this woman?


42 posted on 03/02/2005 2:16:01 PM PST by PreviouslyA-Lurker (Some Americans don't understand that being an American is more than living in America.)
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To: Dashing Dasher

No need to apologize. I do think its funny seeing the 'roided chick bodybuilders who do their darndest to look like he-man, then show up in lipstick and 4" FMPs.


43 posted on 03/02/2005 2:16:47 PM PST by pissant
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To: PreviouslyA-Lurker

No, but if I meet her, I'll pass along your name. ;0]


44 posted on 03/02/2005 2:18:11 PM PST by pissant
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To: pissant
Sure, it's an "eeevvilll" man's fault. Crockshot!

Women discovered that having hairy legs and hairy pits with the new fashions (like silk nylons) and sleeveless shirts.. just didn't work out right.

Ever seen the legs of a hairy woman wearing pantyhose? You think you got underarm sweat stains? Try it with hairy pits!

What precipitated the "shaving" was newer fabrics and newer fashion lines available to massive amounts of women, not just the chic and well-to-do.

(And I'll bet some idiotic feminist scholar got a huge GRANT to write this blather over the evil marketing "men".)

What's next in controversial subjects in FR after "anti-circumcision"? Shaving legs and armpit hair as some twisted type of "gender mutiliation"? Who comes up with this stuff?)

45 posted on 03/02/2005 2:26:48 PM PST by Alia
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To: Alia

Zoinks!


46 posted on 03/02/2005 2:28:34 PM PST by pissant
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To: exnavychick

I wish you better luck: I heard the same line back in my twenties. I wore nothing BUT silk stockings (finding a garter was quite a pain) as pantyhose was the "IN" thing). Didn't change the hair on my legs at all. And I wore silk hose for two years straight. I think there's a genetic and/or hormone relationship to "hair".


47 posted on 03/02/2005 2:29:36 PM PST by Alia
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To: pissant

Heh heh. I am getting too old and matronly for short skirts, but I wore a few back in my teens. There is something to be said for a knee length skirt in a flattering cut, though. :)

I would shave whether the man in my life liked it or not...I do! :) Worked out great for your girlfriend that you didn't mind, though.


48 posted on 03/02/2005 2:30:48 PM PST by exnavychick
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To: pissant

Sorry to sound like I was dumping on you -- lol. I was thinking of this blithe prattle that passed for information in the original article. Revisionist history has a way of really peeving me.


49 posted on 03/02/2005 2:32:05 PM PST by Alia
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To: pissant

I'm not interested. Now if she has a brother, oh!, wait!, I'm married!

; )


50 posted on 03/02/2005 2:32:10 PM PST by PreviouslyA-Lurker (Some Americans don't understand that being an American is more than living in America.)
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To: exnavychick

There is something to be said for the female Navy uniform as well. ;^}


51 posted on 03/02/2005 2:33:05 PM PST by pissant
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To: PreviouslyA-Lurker

I guess I get what I deserve for making an assumption.....


52 posted on 03/02/2005 2:34:20 PM PST by pissant
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To: Alia

It wouldn't surprise me if it were true, actually. I would love to wear silk ones, and am even willing to hunt up a garter for them, but my boys would have them ripped in a second...if not them, then my cats would. :) Regular stockings (not full on pantyhose, ewww) tend to squish your thighs in an unflattering way if you want them to stay up, in my experience. I work out, too! LOL


53 posted on 03/02/2005 2:34:21 PM PST by exnavychick
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To: pissant

LOL! Except the dress whites...man, I hated those things, even WITH a skirt! I looked so dumb in it...now, IF I had stayed in long enough to make chief, or to get into an LDO program, I wouldn't have minded so much, heh heh.


54 posted on 03/02/2005 2:36:27 PM PST by exnavychick
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To: Alia

That's better. There is no doubt that women are just as responsible for the "improvements" in fashion we've seen over the years. I'm not a man-hater either, I am one. ;o}


55 posted on 03/02/2005 2:38:18 PM PST by pissant
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To: exnavychick
I think she looks mighty fine.
56 posted on 03/02/2005 2:41:08 PM PST by pissant
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To: exnavychick
I do not wear pantyhose. I've hated them from the get-go. I feel like I'm choking in 'em. So, I've always worn silk hose. It hasn't cut down, reduced, obliterated leg hair whatsoever. I guess I just took after my dad, a bit. My mom, OTOH, seldom if ever shaved -- maybe 3 times a year. And she only wore hose for a few years of her life. My friends have many daughters; some of the daughters have to shave (choice) and some don't. But, I wish you luck with the silk! :) (It is the best, and feels really good too!) But cut down on the hair? I dunno about that one..
57 posted on 03/02/2005 2:46:55 PM PST by Alia
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To: pissant
>Who decided women should shave their legs?


58 posted on 03/02/2005 2:48:45 PM PST by theFIRMbss
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To: pissant
WOMEN are always responsible for the choices they make -- just that some refuse to accept responsibility and instead blame others for the choices, they themselves make. It's an old tired saw ...

I'm glad you are not a man-hater (me neither); you is a man, I is not! :)

59 posted on 03/02/2005 2:48:58 PM PST by Alia
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To: Alia

Yeah but don't gay men design all the latest hairstyles?? :}


60 posted on 03/02/2005 2:50:42 PM PST by pissant
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