Hair Removal in Ancient History

The pursuit of a hair-free body may be as old as the cavemen. Archaeologists have evidence that men shaved their faces as far back as twenty thousand years ago, using sharpened rocks and shells to scrape off hair. The Sumerians removed hair with tweezers. Ancient Arabians used string. Egyptians, including Cleopatra, also did it -- some with bronze razors they took to their tombs, some with sugar and others with beeswax. The Greeks, who equated smooth with civilized, did it, too. Roman men shaved their faces until Emperor Hadrian -- although Julius Caesar is said to have had his facial hairs plucked. Roman ladies also plucked their eyebrows with tweezers. Another primitive method of hair removal, actually used by women as late as the 1940s, involved rubbing off the hair by rubbing skin with abrasive mitts or discs the consistency of fine sandpaper.

As an alternative, there were lotion and cream depilatories (from the Latin d_pil_re: d_-, completely + pil_re, deprive of hair), which dissolved--and still do--hair above the surface of the skin. (It should be noted here that while the term depilatory has seemingly meant cream and lotion forms of hair removal, by definition it technically includes wax and sugar, as well.) Early depilatories were made from such choice ingredients as resin, pitch, white vine or ivy gum extracts, ass's fat, she-goat's gall, bat's blood and powdered viper. Evidence of depilatory use dates as far back as 4000-3000 B.C., when women used a depilatory ("rhusma turcorum") containing orpiment (natural arsenic trisulphide), quicklime (used to make cement) and starch made into a paste. Clearly, throughout history there have been drastic lengths to which people would go to eliminate body hair.

The Middle East

Among the ancient Egyptians, a clean-shaven face was a symbol of status. According to Herodotus, 'Egyptians are shaven at other times, but after a death they let their hair and beard grow.' They used depilatory creams, razors and pumice stones for this purpose. Both sexes shaved themselves bald and wore elaborate wigs. The practice of removing hair was not limited to the face and head. Egyptian women beeswaxed their legs. They also used depilatories made of starch, arsenic and quicklime.

This obsession with hairlessness probably had as much to do with hygiene as with ideals of beauty and fashion. The hot Middle Eastern climate encouraged germs and diseases to breed, and the removal of all body hair was a preventive measure against infection.

No doubt Middle Easterners used a hair removal process called body sugaring, involving the application of a natural, sugar-based paste (usually sugar, lemon and other natural ingredients cooked to the consistency of soft taffy) that was either rubbed or pulled off in the opposite direction of hair growth. The high sugar content inhibited bacterial growth in the region's hot environs. The method reputedly was born out of a Middle Eastern bridal ritual. The night before a wedding, Lebanese, Palestinian, Turkish and Egyptian brides had all body hair, except eyebrows and the hair on their heads, removed by the bridal party. According to lore, the bride maintained her hairless body throughout her marriage as a symbol of cleanliness and respect for her husband.

Not all eyebrows were left intact. Art and artifacts indicate that the Mesopotamians trimmed superfluous hair from their brows with tweezers. During the excavation of Ur, capital city of the Chaldeans, tweezers were found in a tomb dating back to about 3500 BC.

The hair removal process we call threading, comes from Arabia, where women laced cotton string through their fingers and ran it briskly over their legs to encircle and pull out the hair.

The Near East

In the Indus River Valley of Pakistan, hygiene was a religious imperative for the ancient Hindus. In ancient India, chest and pubic hair was shaved, and the chin and upper lip hair was shaved every fourth day.

Europe

An absence of body hair has been a European ideal since the Greeks and Romans. In Roman times, the first shave of a youth came to be regarded as the arrival of masculine adulthood and was offered as a token to his favorite god.

During the Middle Ages, upper class European women wanted to be pale. A 13th century French verse lists some of the requirements of a lady's toilette supplied by a traveling merchant; among the things are "razors and forceps."

The puritan element in the medieval church prevented most Englishwomen from using cosmetics. The Church believed that the use of cosmetics tampered with man's--and, therefore, God's--image. Indeed, in The Romaunt of the Rose, Chaucer personifies 'Beautee' as a woman who uses no 'peynte' and who leaves her brows unplucked.

Anglo Saxons did eventually use tweezers for plucking superfluous hairs from eyebrows and other body parts. By the mid-15th century, it was fashionable to have plucked eyebrows and a very high, shaved forehead.

High foreheads continued to be the fashion through Elizabethan times. If a woman didn't have a high forehead, she plucked her front hair to get one. It is said that mothers often used walnut oil on their children's foreheads in hopes of preventing hair growth. They also used bandages impregnated with vinegar and cat's dung.

It is also said that the Duke of Newcastle paid 40 pounds to have his wife's facial hair permanently removed, yet in a letter dated 1755, Horace Walpole refers to the Duke's retirement, saying that he can now 'let his beard grow as long as his Duchess's.'

There were many alternative methods of hair removal, ranging from pulverized egg shells to a mixture of cat's dung and vinegar. In the early 18th century (1700-1737) Lemery's Curiosa Arcana, published in 1711, gives a recipe for the complexion: To remove hair, one was instructed to 'Take the shells of 52 eggs, beat them small and distill them with a good fire.' Then, with the water, 'Anoint yourself where you would have the Hair off.' For ladies with more cats than chickens, Lemery recommended beating 'hard, dry Cats-dung...to a powder' and tempering it with strong vinegar for the same effect. Other homemade depilatories contained quick-lime.

It wasn't until the 18th century that the first instrument specifically designed as a safety razor appeared. Invented in 1762 by a French barber, Jean Jacques Perret, it employed a metal guard placed along one edge of the blade to prevent the blade from accidentally slicing into the shaver's skin.

North America

Native Americans tweezed their whiskers, hair by hair, between halves of a clam shell, and circa 1700 American women applied poultices of caustic lye to burn away hair.

There is evidence of the marketing of powdered depilatories in the United States by 1844. Writing about New York City in that year, Lydia Maria Child cited the case of the advertisements of a Dr. Gouraud, the maker of a depilatory powder, who promoted his product by linking it to the Queen of Sheba. Gouraud's ad claimed that Solomon, the Queen's famed paramour, invented a highly beautifying powder the secret of which died with Solomon until it was rediscovered by Dr. Gouraud, whose 'Poudre Subtile will effectually remove every appearance of beard from the lips.'

South America

Waxing has always been a rite of passage for Brazilian women, who used to use secretions from the Coco de Mono tree to remove hair. Today, mothers introduce their daughters at age 15 to the "aesthetic clinics" that do depilacao, using the cold wax method. Depiladoras (literally, wax women) even make house calls.