For almost 100 years, women have been shaving their natural body hair. The internet doing what it does best, there's a club for those who are hairy and proud.

Ever since the dawn of man, or at least sometime around 6,000 years ago, shaving ones body hair was pretty normal.

The Egyptians were a sleek people that shaved it all off. There's no real proof, but it's widely believed they ran hairless to stave off the spread of disease and pests like lice... but their methods were painful. Burning hair off was a normal practice, as was using quicklime and arsenic to chemically remove hair like a BCE-Nair product. It wasn't until the Roman empire that primitive razors were invented.

Fast forward 2500 years, and it brings us close to the dawn of fashionable female shaving. Most women lived by the standards of the time. The fashion was very modest. Very little skin was in, and most women covered themselves from ankles to wrists. As a result of there being no fashions revealing so much skin, there really was no reason for women to shave their body hair.

Skip ahead to May of 1915... an upscale magazine called Harper's Bazaar contained an advertisement for hair removal powder that featured a very risque picture of a woman showing off her bare armpits. You can see it here. In 1915, that might as well have been porn. Women wanting to be more attractive to their men, naturally shaving an armpit was the new culture. Shaving one legs, on the other hand, was a lot slower to catch on.

There was a glimmer of hope in the 1920's that smooth legs were every-woman's high fashion. Women who started this trend were called "Flappers." They wore knee length dresses, and men apparently didn't find hairy legs attractive. While it was a trend, it was short lived.

The 1930's, and the Great Depression era brought modesty back into style. Not because modesty was trendy... Modesty at the time was affordable. Just like today, short dresses often cost more than ankle length skirts. That's just how fashion works... but like any fashion, it changes with the times.

Enter the 1940's and the era of the pin-up girl.

By the time we finally went to war with Germany, most GI's had been stationed out of country for a few years. The only thing to keep our boys safe was GI weapons and training, and the pin-up pictures that were included in most care-packages. It was the artists creating those pin-up pics that put the final nail in the coffin of hairy legs.

It was sleek, sexy, and men couldn't agree more. Things had forever been changed.

Sure, like any trend, there were plenty of battles to be fought. The feminist movements of the 60's and 70's are likely the most well known. Burning bras and growing their natural hair was a sign of womanhood in those times... but again, along with any trend comes the eventual 'back to normal' for the majority of people who just seem to outgrow the times.

It appears that those hairy aspects of the feminist movement are coming back into style... Not with some political agenda, not for empowerment, and certainly not due to fashion. It seems that women have finally decided that not shaving is the most comfortable way to live.

If you want to be a part of the movement, or point someone in that direction... Click here for the Official Hairy Legs Club Tumblr

 

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