The hair that we have on our bodies and what we choose to do with it is as unique as a January snowflake. Body hair creeping out from all our creases and edges is a kind of pleasant reminder of our mammalian roots—one which we may choose to either embrace or hide the traces of.

Let’s go back to the beginning, what the heck happened? From crawling fur balls, to hairless bipeds, what’s the lineage of our body hair? What was evolution’s agenda having us lose the bodily vegetation granted to our monkey relatives and what’s with our contemporary cosmetic obsession to remove the precious amount we’ve managed to retain?

Why the hair?

Hair is a characteristic that unites us all, so let’s get to the root of the situation! My questions came in the following order: one, why did we lose our hair? And two, what’s the significance of the hair that we do have?
We evolved to become the hairless primate because of genetic advantage. Seems like as we moved to warmer climates and began hunting for prey while standing upright, our needs changed. Among our top priorities were parasite resistance and heat regulation. An individual with less hair would have a better hand at surviving the elements and, therefore, was viewed as a more attractive mate. As a fun side note, and I’m sorry if I make you blush, but we were hairless for approximately 1 million years before we began to wear clothes.

And so, the hair that has survived the tests of time, what does it do? Turns out, while we may have lost hair, we didn’t lose hair follicles. In fact, we have the same number of follicles as our ape ancestors, equalling around 5 million over our entire body. We’re born with the same number of hair follicles that we’ll ever have, with hair sprouting out from the multitude of these openings at various junctures of our lives.
The highest density of hair is, you guessed it, on our heads. Head hair acts as our own little built in sun helmets. Eyebrows block sweat and are surprising crucial for non-verbal communication. Eyelashes protect our precious vision from incoming specks of dirt. The leg and arm hair we have helps us with heat regulation and makes us more sensitive to touch. Finally, pubic hair and underarm hair is arguably related to sexual selection. Besides the fact that fro from down below visually screams sexual maturity (puberty anyone?), both of these areas also contain the odor releasing apocrine glands. These scents are unique to each individual and the hair in those areas help catch and transmit the smell—never, ever underestimate the importance of your lover’s personal perfume.

What happened to make us care?

After we settled into our emergent hairless state, the activity surrounding body hair styling (evolutionary or otherwise) lay dormant for a considerable while, that is, until the last century or so. It’s true, that since then, the norms surrounding our body hair (or lack thereof) have gone through some pretty drastic changes—from coconut to kiwi to peach to plum one might even say.

You may have found yourself asking: since when were women expected to wax everything below the eyelashes? The answer, my friend, lies in the history of the past 80 years or so. The notion of hair removal only truly came into common practice during that time. Before then, dress was considerably more modest, and women didn’t really have to concern themselves with showing that much skin.
As fashion trends changed, the styles became more and more risqué. But you can arguably trace it back to the advent of the sleeveless dress. Harper’s Bazaar, the holy book of fashion, debuted the new style and informed women of a problem that they didn’t know existed: the appearance of “objectionable hair”. If they wanted to look good in the dress, the hair had to get the boot. The same issue of the magazine contained ads for hair removal creams, and thus started the very beginning of the beauty industry’s monetizing upon the undesirability of body hair.

Over the course of the 20s, knee-high skirts became the norm and the same hair removal creams capitalized on each new trend, concluding that any seen hair was undesirable. By the 50s, the transformation was complete and the message was engrained into society’s mind for generations to come: women should be visibly hairless. This hairless standard applies especially to representations of women in the media. Pubic hair, on the other hand, wasn’t going down without a fight. There was a time, not too long ago, when the curly locks of our beavers signified sexual prowess. During the 60s and 70s, the bush below featured largely in avant garde art and in sexual fantasy. The tides began to turn in the late 80s/90s, with the first attacks being on the bikini line. The hairline kept encroaching on our most delicate flower until the visual standard in the media appeared to be the full-fledged Brazilian. This is thanks in no small part to the porn industry, a business that desired less hair so that the genital region was easier to see, not because it considered it to be objectively more attractive. But with the rising ubiquity of porn, men and women conflated what they saw on their screens to what they thought they desired to see in the flesh. In my opinion, vaginas don’t have to be laminated and tanned to be sexy.

The hairless trend is not only oppressed upon women. Men share part of the burden too. Whereas 30 years ago, the hairier the chest the sexier, now the predominant representative men in the fashion world is normally chiselled and smooth as a baby’s bottom. All you have to do is flip through the latest issue of Vogue to see some babe sprawled out, shirt off, with toned hairless abs and a piercing look in his eye. It’s sad to think that a hairy chest, a traditional symbol of virility is now being swapped with a practice that results in it’s absence, manscaping. Also let us not forget, that it is usually men who are burdened with the task of deciding how to handle the hair that grows out of their face on a daily basis.

Now & hair

While it is no means the dominant sentiment within society, more and more trends have been popping up that encourage people to love their hair, in all it’s manifestations. Many celebs have made cameo in this movement towards “body hair, don’t care”, including Julia Roberts, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Tina Fey, Cameron Diaz, I mean seriously, the list goes on and on. And yes, every single one of those celebs has made a public statement endorsing body hair or has actually appearing in public with visible pit hair.

Body hair on a woman is often blindly associated with feminism, but without a real underlying understanding to the logic at work here. The point is, is that a women should have the freedom to choose to either shave her legs, or not, shave her pits or not, shave her pubes or not—just as men are felt to. These are all choices that should be made by the person who is the inhabiter of that body, and ONLY that person (not by the media, the fashion world, society, etc.). Some women and men choose to remove their hair because it makes them feel more sexy, and why not? All the power to them.
But I have to say, that besides saving yourself a considerable amount of time and money, by lowering your grooming standards you’ll also stand to reap some health benefits. It appears as though certain depilatory methods, such as waxing hair, can create vaginal regions that are more prone to infection and STI contraction. Also, think of all the hair you’ll save and refer back to all the evolutionary benefits I listed above regarding body hair.

Hang in there

It’s kind of crazy to think that hair is this malleable extension of ourselves, which is styled along with the arc of history. Personally, I go through major swings within my hair care arc just throughout the history of my own short life. Sometimes I’m obsessively preening and enacting extensive body hair evacuation measures, while other times I just couldn’t give less of hoot. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum, from having a very thin eyebrow incident, to making my BFFs in high school gasp from the sight of my over grown underarm hair. However, I’ve grown into a basic mantra, which is that hair removal exists on a “need to” basis. What I’m trying to say is, is that if it’s cold outside, you can expect that my pits are rocking a bushy vibe.

I believe that we should look at hair for what it really is. All of us need to, especially women, loosen up our grip on this media projected standard of beauty, and learn to love our hair that pours from our many outlets.