Talk:History of removal of leg and underarm hair in the United States

I added a link to an article by The Women’s Museum of California -- while their main web site is https://www.womensmuseumca.org/, their article collection is hosted on Wordpress. Is that OK? Aliza250 (talk) 08:23, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

paintings of hairless women?
paintings of women sans body hair certainly predated the 1900's, so to say that it was not the norm before then seems misleading. It seems more likely that having hairless underarms/legs WAS considered ideal (or more divine, since the majority of these paintings featured figures of divinity), but that the dress of the time made it so that one could pretend the hair didn't exist. I'd be interested to see what people's thoughts on women's body hair was before this time, since I do believe that this goes far beyond an advertising campaign JointCompound (talk) 19:37, 30 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd wager that body hair removal wasn't the norm, as the article says (and cites proof for); despite historical paintings depicting hairless female nudes. A brief review of unclothed male bodies in European art from 1500-1900 will also show mostly hairless bodies. I propose this is not because full body hair removal was the norm for men. Rather, body hair was largely left off of all bodies because it would obscure the line of the figure the artist was portraying, thus "muddying" the image. Additionally, it seems likely that body hair was mostly left off of all bodies because of the deep roots of Hellenistic Greek & Roman beauty ideals in European artistic traditions. 2600:1702:1DC0:2110:E846:EDB4:E16D:2F85 (talk) 06:27, 20 May 2023 (UTC)