HISTORY OF SHAVING, THE RAZOR, AND HAIR REMOVAL TECHNIQUES

In the unending winter of our last Ice Age, facial hair was a liability. Once wet, it would hold
water against the skin until frozen, accelerating the onset of frostbite.
Early humans are believed to have begun pulling out their hairs about 100,ooo years ago—
mainly using seashells like tweezers, based on cave paintings depictions.
The first depilatory creams—rendered from arsenic, quicklime, and starch—made their first
appearance around 3000 BC, and were employed primarily by women.
In the fourth century BC, Greek historian Herodotus derisively noted that the Egyptians "set
cleanliness above seemliness" by bathing several times daily and maintaining a strict regimen of
shaving their bodies clean—men, women, even children… Living along the muggy shores of Nile
River with shoulder length hair is intolerable. What's more, long hair can house pests and
diseases alike…Going bald was a much safer and more hygienic alternative.
Egyptians routinely applied depilatory creams and repeated rubbings with a pumice stone to
remove every trace of stubble. Archaeologists have also found both circular bronze razors and
hatched-shaped "rotary" blades in many burial chambers, for use in the afterlife.
Middle Ages - after the Catholic church split from the Eastern Orthodox in 1054, Western church
leaders encouraged shaving among its clergy to distinguish its members from the their Jewish
and Muslim counterparts. That trend was put into canonical law in 1096, when the Archbishop of
Rouen banned beards outright save for Crusaders in the Holy Land.
Shaving, similarly, remained popular among women in the Middle Ages, who followed the
example of Queen Elizabeth I. She started the trend of tweezing the eyebrows (or applying a
walnut oil, vinegar, and ammonia concoction) to elongate the forehead, but left everything
below the neck au naturale.
18th Century – Jean-Jacques Perret developed the world's first safety razor—by installing a
wooden guard onto a standard straight razor.
This design evolved again, in the early 19th century, into the modern Sheffield straight razor,
featuring a rotating guard the doubled as a handle. Then, in 1880, the Kampfe brothers patented
and marketed the world's first safety razor, incorporating a wire guard along the edge of the
blade as well as a lather-catching head.
1903 - King C. Gillette figures out how to make a thin, sharp, disposable blade cheaply enough to
work, but ONLY FOR MEN.
Rapidly changing social mores of the time saw women exposing more skin above the ankle and
wrist—a leading fashion magazine of the time went so far as to show a woman in a swimming
suit with her arms raised and armpits bare. Until that point, depilatory cremes were the defacto
method of ladies hair removal. That changed in 1915, when Gillette debuted the Milady
Decolletée, the first razor built specifically for women.
1960 – Stainless steel blades
1971 – first multi-blade razor
1940 - At the start of WWII, Remington opened the dry shave market further by designing and
selling the first women's electric razor. Since nylon was a valuable wartime commodity, women
were forced to go bare legged more often.
Waxing strips and laser hair removal methods both debuted in the mid-1960s, though laser's
tendency to singe the skin as well as the hair quickly led to its disuse in favor of electrolysis,
wherein a very fine heat probe is used to destroy a hair follicle, after which the hair itself is
tweezed out.

ADVERTISING AND POP CULTURE

In 1915, Gillette created the Milady Décolleté, which launched what's known now as "The First
Great Anti-Underarm Hair Campaign." This campaign suggested to women that now that they
have these razors, they should use them on their armpit hair.

In ads for hair removal, women were now urged to remove "objectionable hair" from their
bodies — namely their underarms. That particular area first got attention because sleeveless
dresses were becoming increasingly popular by the 1920s. In an ad that appeared in Harper's
Bazaar in 1915, completely bare underarms were a "necessity."

This stands as one of the first instances of fashion directly affecting how women shave their body
hair.

The legs were emphasized in the photographs or drawings accompanying the ads and the
headlines featured such phrases as "Man's eye view," eind "Let's Look at Your Legs—Everyone
Else Does."

Sears first offers dresses with sheer sleeves in 1922 (sleveless dresses do not appear on catalog
pages until 1925). That same year marks the first time that products designated to remove hair
other than that on face, neck and arms are offered to the general public.

During the WWII, there was a shortage of nylon, so women couldn't wear stockings every day.
That meant having to go bare-legged and, to be deemed socially acceptable, women shaved
their legs. Previously, some of the only women who shaved their legs were dancers, whose legs
people were obviously paying a lot of attention to.
 With the birth of the bikini in 1946, the stage was set for women to start trimming up down
south. While the 1960s and 1970s encouraged a wilder bush, the 1980s and '90s encouraged
more of a trim — or, in some cases, a complete trim.

The first salon offering a complete Brazilian wax came stateside in 1987, and from then on, the
practice traveled mostly through word of mouth.

20TH CENTURY BEAUTY STANDARDS – THE TRANSITION

Cultural conceptions of female beauty were in the process of changing during the period 1920-1940. The
ideal female beauty at the beginning of the twentieth century had been an ivory-shouldered, fair
complexioned matron with a luxuriant head of hair whose legs might as well have been missing (as
indeed they were from beauty and hygiene books of the time). By the middle of the century, attention
had been drawn to lower parts of the anatomy and a tanned, shapely, hairless leg was a thing of beauty.

Helena Rubenstein, in a beauty book published in 1930, wrote that removal of hair from the underarms
and legs was "as much a part of the routine of every woman as washing her hair or manicuring her
nails."'

Judging from the Depression-era offerings of Sears and the comments in health texts and beauty books
published during the 1930s, at least some of those who began the practice during the 1920s to keep up
with fashion had turned it into custom by the 1930s.

1940’s – “Minor Assault on Leg Hair”: The beauty editor of Harper's Bazar wrote repeatedly about legs
throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1939 she wrote, "A word in passing about legs. Ankle
socks on the campus are a fine, old institution and all very well, but not on furry legs. If you must wear
socks you owe it to your associates to get into the habit of using some safe, dependable depilatory. And
we mean regularly—not just once in a blue moon as a kind of isolated experiment."

Whether or not the advice given in the 1940s was heeded immediately is not clear. However, the fact
that 98% of all American women aged 15-44 in 1964 removed body hair (70% of those older than 44 did
so)'^ would seem to indicate that most of those who reached their twenties during the 1940s adopted
the practice.