[bright music] Why do women shave their legs and under their arms, but men don't?

And do women shave their legs because of World War II?

So, lots of folks find excessive hairiness, with the exception of the hair on our heads, to be a bit off-putting.

And this rule seems to be doubly true for women in places where shorty-shorts and bare arms are the standard of summertime.

But have you ever stopped to wonder why?

I mean, if our mammalian bodies are busy growing hair here, there, and everywhere, then what makes the hair we trim in certain areas so darn special?

And when did adult women start to believe that being silky smooth all over was more appealing than our naturally furry forms?

Let's dive right in because this is going to get hairy, but hopefully not sticky.

Our first question for today is: When did men and women start removing their body hair, and why?

So, even though removing body hair stretches back centuries, this practice isn't universal.

Shaving customs have varied across cultures as well as coming into and out of fashion at various points in time.

There are some who note that ancient Egyptians may have pioneered the hair removal game with tweezers made from shells and waxes made of sugar, among other techniques.

Straight razors, the shaving tool preferred by hipsters and Sweeney Todds, have been around for several hundred years in one form or another, with its most current form tracing back to the mid-18th century.

And today, certain Jewish sects and certain followers of Islam and Sikhism prevent followers from shaving their bodies or men from shaving their beards for religious reasons.

According to Professor Rebecca Herzig in her book, "Plucked: A History of Hair Removal," early colonists in the Americas made a seemingly important note that Native American men and women they encountered practiced hair removal.

But the reason behind men like Thomas Jefferson noting whether or not Native American men had beards was-- surprise, surprise-- some super wacky, super inaccurate race science entrenched in European customs about class.

18th century enlightenment theories dictated that men who could grow beards were civilized, and those with less body hair were prone to feebleness.

Herzig notes that these thoughts were steeped in humoral theory from the classical age, which was all about your internal balance and nothing about being funny.

It was believed that the four humours-- phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile-- needed to remain in balance, and that this was reflected in a person's complexion, which included their external hairiness and skin tone.

But all of this was a bunch of hooey since, I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time my physician said, "My yellow bile was out of step with my phlegm and causing me to grow a beard."

Other hair-removal trends through the ages included homemade remedies used by women in the U.S. during the 18th century and a rise in depilatory creams in the mid-19th century, often made outside of the home in early industrial factories.

But those creams turned out to be less than popular since they often resulted in burns and other skin issues for women, who use them to fight the fuzz.

Although companies tried to rebrand those same creams as "Eastern Beauty Remedies" to make them sound more enticing and less horrible.

So, people have been plucking and priming for a while, but this wasn't because hairlessness was a universally accepted beauty standard for men or for women.

So, that brings us to our next question: When did shaved legs and underarms become a beauty standard specifically linked to women?

Well, up until the turn of the 20th century in the U.S., women having body hair wasn't exactly breaking news.

But that was because, in part, many of the fashions favored by women up until that point covered the majority of their real estate, and it doesn't make a ton of sense to shave your legs and underarms if you're covered from head to toe.

Though removing unsightly facial hair for women was not completely unheard of.

But when those ladies started to show more skin, we started to see the rise of a crafty razor salesman named King Camp Gillette.

In 1915, Gillette created the first razor marketed specifically to women, the Milady Decollete Razor, which was released alongside a bunch of clever and tricky ad campaigns that linked the latest fashions to hairless women.

Buying a dress without sleeves or a skirt with a high hem?

Then the message was to go out and get a razor to compliment your new ensemble.

And a lot of these ad campaigns also focused on making shaving sound less like something that happened at the barbershop, and more like an intimate part of every well-heeled woman's daily grooming practices.

The message to remove underarm hair caught on pretty quickly with the rise of sleeveless dresses.

But even though hems were higher, stockings remained a popular alternative for ladies who weren't into shaving their whole leg.

But it wasn't until World War II that leg shaving became a bigger trend for women in the U.S. and Europe.

In 1939, the DuPont company released the first waves of nylon stockings, which provided women with a cheaper and more durable option for hosiery than their silk and rayon predecessors.

But the new nylon wasn't just good for covering legs; it also played a crucial role in World War II when it was used to create parachutes.

As a result, Allied forces like the U.S. and UK heavily rationed nylon throughout the war effort, which left legs truly exposed for the first time.

Also, the UK implemented nationwide clothing rationing with people getting vouchers for new items based on the difficulty of making the item, the availability of the material it was made from, and the age of the person in need of clothing.

For example, fast-growing children received a special allowance.

Pamphlets like 1943's "Make Do and Mend" encouraged everyone to mend old clothing, create stylish patches on holes, and to knit new items out of the yarn picked from old ones, including knit underwear.

But despite the shortages and regulations, there was still encouragement from Allied governments for women to boost morale in the battlefield by maintaining beauty standards at home.

So, what's girl to do if she's being told on the one hand to conserve costs, while on the other, she's being told that letting her appearance slide could actually cause the war to go worse, because not shaving is apparently as bad as the Second World War.

Well, this led to a variety of solutions, including-- you guessed it--shaving your legs to stay smooth, a style that was popular also with the pinup models of the day.

But women weren't ready to abandon stockings altogether.

This led to a few interesting solutions to give the appearance of nylon-clad legs, including drawing a line up the back of your legs, to mirror stockings or darkening the skin of your legs with tinted lotions and gravy browning, which is a dark molasses and spice mixture that's popular in England and used to darken gravies-- side fact, also popular in the former British colonies since I grew up seeing this in my mom's spice cabinet.

But despite the final and kind of delicious option of gravy legs as a fashion statement, this only worked if your legs were already smooth.

As time went on and styles continue to get more brief-- think mini skirts, high cut shorts, and itsy bitsy, teeny weenie, yellow polka dot bikinis-- shaving for women in the U.S. continue to spread, and women's hair continued to recede, until we just thought it was the norm.

So, how does it all add up?

Well, although having hairy legs may seem outside of the cultural norm in the contemporary U.S., our aversion to hair on women's legs and underarms is actually a relatively recent development and a development that has more to do with wartime rationing and sneaky ad campaigns than it does with hair growth being inherently bad.

And we have King Camp Gillette, a guy with a name that sounds like a cross between a comic book villain, a character from a fast-food restaurant, and a sleepaway camp for the well-to-do to thank for that, because he convinced generations of otherwise reasonable folks that there's a difference between razors made for men and women and marketed a version of women's razors plated in 14-karat gold so that it would make a great gift.

Because history, so why not?

So what do you think?

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