History of removal of leg and underarm hair in the United States facts for kids
In the early days of the United States, women usually didn't remove hair from their legs or underarms. People often saw body hair as natural and even good. But in the early 1900s, this idea began to change. Removing underarm and leg hair became a new trend for American women. This happened because of several big changes in society.
One major change was how people defined what it meant to be a woman. In the Victorian era (late 1800s), being feminine was mostly about a woman's good character. But by the early 1920s, this shifted. Being feminine became more about a woman's body and how it looked. Women's clothes in the 1920s showed more skin. At the same time, women started using bras, makeup, and going on diets. One author, J. Brumberg, said, "The body itself became the fashion in the 1920s." Because of this, removing unwanted hair was promoted as something women should do. This led to many new hair removal products being sold.
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How Underarm Hair Removal Became Popular
Around 1908, a big advertising push began to convince American women that underarm hair was not desirable. Three main industries helped make this happen:
- Companies that sold hair removal products to men wanted to sell to women too.
- The fashion industry started making new clothes like sleeveless evening gowns and shorter skirts.
- Women's magazines became very popular and were read by many people.
Creating a Market for Women's Hair Removal
Men had been shaving for a while, first at barbershops and then at home. A special "safety-razor" for home use became popular for men in 1903. Gillette sold 90,000 razor sets the very next year!
However, there wasn't really a market for women's hair removal products in the United States yet. Companies had to create this market. A researcher named Hansen noted that removing hair from underarms and legs was "practically unheard of." She explained that companies had to convince women that hair removal was good. They also had to show women how to do it.
The first razor made just for women came out in 1915 from Gillette. From then until the 1930s, Gillette and many other companies used the changing women's fashions as a reason to remove underarm hair. Later, they did the same for leg hair. This message was spread mostly through the new and very popular women's magazines.
The Rise of Women's Magazines
The first women's magazine, The Delineator, started in 1873. Soon after, five more big magazines appeared: Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, and Pictorial Review. These were called the "Big Six."
Cyrus Curtis, who published the Ladies' Home Journal, told advertisers that his magazine's main goal was to help companies sell products to women. It wasn't just to help American women. Advertisers wanted to create new needs for women, not just meet existing ones. Ads for beauty products and services were very common, second only to food ads. Between 1890 and 1914, money spent on advertising grew a lot, from $190 million to $682 million.
New printing methods, better train travel, and improved postal services made it possible for these magazines to reach many people. The number of women in the U.S. grew by two-thirds between 1890 and 1920. Also, almost all women (94%) could read by 1920. These changes meant many more women could read these magazines. The Ladies' Home Journal, the most popular women's magazine, had 25,000 readers in its first year. The wide reach of these magazines made them very powerful.
The Big Underarm Campaign
Ads suggesting that women remove underarm hair started appearing as early as 1908. They became more common around 1914. The 1915 ad shown here, from Harper's Bazaar, is a good example. It explains why underarm hair removal was supposedly needed. It also shows a woman in a sleeveless dress with her arm raised. The caption says, "Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair."
Advertisers chose their words carefully to make them sound better. For example, they used "smoothing" instead of "shaving." They also said "limbs" instead of "legs." This educational campaign about the benefits and ways of hair removal continued into the 1920s and even today. In these ads, underarm hair was called "objectionable," "unwelcome," "embarrassing," "unsightly," and "unclean." Removing it, however, meant a person had "charm" and "the last touch of ‘feminine loveliness.'" It also meant they were "modest," "dainty," and "perfectly groomed." This practice was for "refined women" and "women of fashion."
At first, hair removal companies aimed their ads at wealthy women. But by 1934, similar ads started appearing in the middle-class Ladies' Home Journal. These ads had been in the upper-class Harper's Bazaar for 15 years already.
The History of Leg Hair Removal
The idea of hairless skin spread from underarms to legs in the 1920s. Skirt and dress hemlines became shorter between 1910 and 1927. At first, American women wore thick, dark stockings. But during this time, flesh-colored stockings became popular. These stockings made it look like women had bare legs, even though they didn't.
Then, ads hinting at leg hair removal began to appear. While ads between 1920 and 1940 did mention legs, legs were not the main focus in most of them. The first ad in Harper's Bazaar that focused mainly on legs appeared in 1929. The ad campaign against leg hair was not as big as the one for underarm hair. However, writers for beauty magazines and books did support the idea of hairless legs. This was different from the underarm campaign, where writers didn't play as big a role.
Leg hair removal became much more popular after a specific historical event. In 1941, the production of hosiery (stockings) dropped by 97%. This happened because the U.S. War Production Board stopped making silk and nylon stockings. In response, American women put special decals or "liquid stockings" (leg makeup) on their shaved legs to make it look like they were wearing stockings. Between 1942 and 1945, the War Production Board put more limits on cosmetic making, including leg makeup. They also taxed cosmetics as much as 20%.
The practice of women removing leg hair became very strong in the 1940s. It went from being a trend to a common custom in just a few months during the early 1940s. A survey in 1964 showed that 98% of American women aged 15–44 regularly shaved their legs.
Modern Hair Removal Practices
A hundred years after these ad campaigns began, removing leg and underarm hair is very common for women in the U.S. Not removing hair can even be seen as unusual in some groups. (Though some feminists in the 1970s and 1980s chose not to shave.) Today, it's estimated that 80–99% of American women remove hair from their bodies.
Sometimes, celebrities showing unshaven armpits makes news. For example, actress Julia Roberts had unshaven underarms at the Notting Hill movie premiere in 1999. Anne Robinson, a TV presenter, had a similar reaction when she showed her underarm hair on a TV show in 2008.
Older studies have found that many people, both men and women, thought women who didn't remove body hair were less attractive or sociable. They also thought it might cause some people to feel uncomfortable. However, some women, especially those in Generation Z, are starting to believe that a natural body is beautiful. They are moving away from the idea that they must follow hair removal routines that were once promoted just to sell beauty products.
