Re: Women Shaving (WAS: Re: pomegranate martini! - advertising hype)

jmcquown wrote: 
Andy Katz wrote:

On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 11:24:39 -0500, Julia Altshuler
<jaltshuler@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


jmcquown wrote:


Be that as it may (or may not), shaving dates waaaaay back, whether
you are male or female.  I suspect it has a lot to do with cultural
and social mores (and what is "in fashion") at the time.



Interesting how no one is certain how the practice got started.  We
have paintings of men with shaven faces, but it is harder to know
about women
with shaven armpits and legs.  I've found that most people don't care
one way or the other about body hair, but the people who do care
(usually women) have very strong feelings.


By and large hasn't the esthetics of skin exposed  below the neck
preferred relative hairlessness?

Witness the endless debates on the biking newsgroups over the
necessity, or lack of it, for men to shave their legs.

Andy Katz


I used to work with a guy who was a 'biker' (no, not the Harley type).  He
claimed shaving his body made him able to bike faster.  Huh.  Like body hair
is going to considerably slow you down... I suppose if you were hairy like a
gorilla this might be a factor.  He didn't shave his head...  Weird.


Yeah, right... shaving his body made him a lot faster.

The real reason bikers shave has to be for when they take a spill. The road rash is supposedly worst if you have hair on your legs or arms. Of course, any signficant injury would take long enough to heal that the hair would begin to grow back in the meantime....

I shave my head because I have a skin problem and it's worse with hair. Lots of reasons to shave various types of hair. The point of my original post was that most women didn't start shaving their armpits until the marketing types began telling them they had to be considered stylish. Same thing still exists today. A specific style might grow organically out of a given sub-culture or group, but it's spread and made popular primarily by marketing and advertising.
.

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