One of the most painful female rituals: Waxing

One of the many painful aspects of being a woman is the fact that we always have to be looking good. To achieve this we go through lots of processes among which we can find one that men cannot understand: waxing. They say “why do you give yourself so much pain just to remove some hairs?” The answer probably is “because it works”. It‘s probably one of the best ways to achieve hair removal. Proof of this is that it has been used for a very very long time.



Around 60 B.C Egyptian women like Cleopatra used a method called “sugaring” (which is still used today), similar to waxing but having oil and honey as its main ingredients. For the Egyptians, a hairless and smooth body was a symbol of beauty, youth and innocence.

Later, The Greeks took this idea of a smooth body and thought body hair was ugly. So, mostly the women in the upper class removed every single hair, except for the eyebrows (just like the Egyptians). This can be seen in the sculptures dating from that time.

The Romans shared these views and every woman used different means of depilation (tweezers called the "volsella" and a kind of depilatory cream, the "philotrum" or "dropax", the forerunner of the current depilatory creams!) Waxing was done with resin or pitch.

Then, the Turks considered it sinful for a woman to have hair in her private parts. So, as soon as she felt hair growing there, she had to hurry into public baths and remove it. There were, and still are, special rooms in public baths for women to do so.

However, in the 1550s, Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, forbade her ladies in waiting to remove their pubic hair. This strange prohibition made waxing fall out of fashion and also broke this link between classy women and hair removal.
Waxing was brought back into the game with the invention of the bikini. In the 1960s, smoothness was rediscovered, and in the late 1980s, two Brazilian sisters took their Brazilian waxes to New York City.



Sources:
Get Waxing
LiveStrong.Com
History Undressed
Hair Removal Forum