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Hair removal has been practiced by humans of most cultures throughout history. Cultures that idealized femininity and smoothness in all genders - such as some indigenous peoples of Pre-Columbian North America - used heated bees wax to remove hair from all areas of the body. In many of these cultures their religious leaders, the shamans - who were born men but with feminine attributes - attained a state of not being male or female, in one way, by practicing hair removal with wax! Some sources suggest that waxing was first developed by these people millennia before our common era. Ancient Egyptians of noble background, and all genders, shaved their heads and wore wigs as an emblem of their status. Egyptian nobility, particularly royal women such as Hapshetsut, usurped the royal custom of male only pharaohs by assuming a transgender identity! She, or he, as was now the official title, would display power and status by the wearing of a strap-on beard! It was during this period that a type of wax made of sugar was developed by the Ancient Egyptians and was later adopted by other Semitic and African peoples. In more intense slave based economies such as Ancient Rome, hair plucking was practiced by slaves upon aristocrats and others who could afford the service. Rome and Greece seem to have favoured plucking and shaving over waxing as the symbolic act of being serviced by a slave was viewed as a symbol of status and power. The ancient Greeks saw the presence of a beard as a symbol of one who is pre-occupied with intellectual pursuits and thus not with physical ones such as shaving, for them the beard was seen as a status symbol marking the wearer as being a philosopher or intellectual. Regardless of all this plucking and shaving, waxing was still practiced by both of these Hellenic cultures. With the taking over of The Roman Empire by so called ‘Barberians’ (‘’Barberian’’ is a derivative of the Latin word for beard) hairiness became the fashion once again. It also indicates a lack of pre-occupation with the physical world showing that the person was spiritually inclined which is a hallmark of early Christianity. Renaissance women such Queen Elizabeth I of England favoured a high forehead, no eyebrows and no eyelashes! To achieve this, her chambermaids would fastidiously pluck until absolutely no hair could be seen on the face and a dome shaped forehead was achieved. This striking face shape, along with the aristocratic vogue for paleness – thought to indicate status by displaying that one did not need to work in the Sun – gave many nobles a rather alien insect-like appearance, simply to avoid looking like peasants! Indeed, throughout history the absence or presence of hair seems to indicate different types of power for different types of occasions whether for reasons of beauty or politics, sometimes a combination of both! One of the reasons that waxing has been so prevalent throughout history is that it is the only medium to long term hair removal procedure that is effective for all skin types regardless of pigment or the shape of the hair, it is also one of safest methods of hair removal generally guaranteeing a hair free surface for five to eight weeks. Because of mass industrialization the modern era has seen a wide dispersion of beauty rituals so that hair removal procedures have become more accessible and affordable for all people, perhaps more so than at any other time in history. |
