Factual info on armpit hair

ok, RB, I waited and you didn't do your homework. I was just itching for more knowledge on the armpit hair matter. Ok, to be more civilized, let's say underarms. haha...... So not being able to wait any longer, I googled "Why Women Shave" expecting to find some pornographic sites. But WALLA, I found these bits of useful information! wow! looks like the Phd degree is on the way! hahaa....So Read on, if you're as interested in it as I am. haha... Have fun!

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Ok, first I read about the underarm at Wikipedia-Underarm. Talks of how the hair grows with onset of puberty, and it's relation to intensification of sex drive due to blah blah. (some men have agreed with this..which is why some women don't shave.) Then they talk about religous aspects, cultural etc. and how it is not so common in some countries such as China and East Europe. I agree with that...coz I've seen China girls with errr......underarms hair. Click on link if you wanna read more.

As for history of shaving, particularly in the West, here is an excerpt, taken from The Straight Dope. A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's storehouse of human knowledge Who decided women should shave their legs and underarms? 06-Feb-1991

"U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.)The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn't know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair. To be sure, women had been concerned about the appearance of their hair since time immemorial, but (sensibly) only the stuff you could see. Prior to World War I this meant scalp and, for an unlucky few, facial hair.Around 1915, however, sleeveless dresses became popular, opening up a whole new field of female vulnerability for marketers to exploit.According to Hope, the underarm campaign began in May, 1915, in Harper's Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the upper crust. The first ad "featured a waist-up photograph of a young woman who appears to be dressed in a slip with a toga-like outfit covering one shoulder. Her arms are arched over her head revealing perfectly clear armpits. The first part of the ad read `Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.'"Within three months, Cook tells us, the once-shocking term "underarm" was being used. A few ads mentioned hygiene as a motive for getting rid of hair but most appealed strictly to the ancient yearning to be hip. "The Woman of Fashion says the underarm must be as smooth as the face," read a typical pitch.The budding obsession with underarm hair drifted down to the proles fairly slowly, roughly matching the widening popularity of sheer and sleeveless dresses. Antiarm hair ads began appearing in middlebrow McCall's in 1917. Women's razors and depilatories didn't show up in the Sears Roebuck catalog until 1922, the same year the company began offering dresses with sheer sleeves. By then the underarm battle was largely won. Advertisers no longer felt compelled to explain the need for their products but could concentrate simply on distinguishing themselves from their competitors.

Cecil's colleague Marg Meikle (Dear Answer Lady, 1992) notes that Greek statues of women in antiquity had no pubic hair, suggesting that hairlessness was some sort of ideal of feminine beauty embedded in Western culture. If so, a lot of Western culture never got the message. Greek women today (and Mediterranean women generally) do not shave their hair. The practice has been confined largely to English-speaking women of North America and Great Britain, although one hears that it's slowly spreading elsewhere.

Here's hoping some all-but-thesis Ph.D. candidate will pick up the trail." --CECIL ADAMS

(ahem RB, wanna take this Phd offer up?)

Finally, if you wanna really know how it all started, from the simple use of sea shells to strange concoctions made my women to get rid of bodily hair, read here. The Shaving Historical TimeLine