THERE she stood, the lovely Julia Roberts at the premier of Notting Hill, wearing a scarlet dress, looking stunning. Then she lifted an arm and waved to the crowd, and the world gasped. Shock! Horror! Could that really be brown curly hair under her delicately toned arm? Men groaned in disgust. Women gawped in disbelief. And the media went wild.
Why did Roberts’s revelation cause such a stir? Why do we find hair in certain places so unattractive? And why do so many people in the western world, particularly women, go to such great lengths to remove it? We have evolved to be one of the least hairy mammals, and what we have left is presumably there for a reason. So you might think we would cherish it, but instead we seem to have an ambivalent attitude to our hair, pampering and preening the stuff on top of our heads while attempting to remove every trace of it elsewhere. Even men are beginning to get in on the act.
Humans may be referred to as the naked ape, but we actually have around 5 million hair follicles, which is what you would expect of an ape of our size. We look so bald because, over most of our body, the hair is very fine compared with that of our primate cousins.
Advertisement
Theories abound as to why evolution has left us so smooth. The most popular is that when bipedal hominids moved out of the forests and into the searing hot sun of the savannahs, they needed to lose hair to keep cool. More controversial is the idea that we were once aquatic apes, and because fur is not an effective thermal layer under water it had to go. Then there’s sexual selection: for whatever reason, our ancestors came to prefer mates with the least hair, leading to ever more naked offspring. Or we may have lost body and facial hair to improve our ability to identify others and to make communication easier. The most recent idea centres on health. UK-based researchers Mark Pagel from the University of Reading and Walter Bodmer from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford point out that hairy flesh is the ideal home for ectoparasites such as ticks and biting flies. They believe that innovations such as clothes, fire and cave-dwelling allowed our ancestors to ditch the fur along with the associated diseases such parasites can transmit.
Evidence to support any of these ideas is sparse, but theories about why we have retained hair in certain areas are even more speculative. The luxuriant hair on our heads may be the result of natural selection because a flowing mane to protect our ancestors’ heads from the hot midday sun or cloak their bodies in cooler climates could have increased their chances of surviving and reproducing. Alternatively, our crowning glory could be due to sexual selection. Certainly, most people find a strong, healthy head of hair attractive even today.
But why retain pubic hair? One theory is that it acts as a reliable signal of reproductive maturity, its development indicating a readiness for sexual intercourse. Another is that it draws attention to the sexual organs, particularly the penis. Protection has also been mooted as a possible function: pubic hair cushioning the genitals during intercourse; pubic and underarm hair both reducing chafing at these joints. David Stoddart of the University of Tasmania, Australia, says the clue is to be found in the location of our major scent glands: in the armpits and pubis, where hair may act to intensify odours and waft them around to potential mates.
“We use hair-free skin as a billboard to attract mates, to advertise that we have good genes”
Despite these sexual associations, our dislike of body hair seems to go back a long way. Both men and women are thought to have been removing it in ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece. But the real depilatory purge only began in 1915 when advertisers launched the “great underarm campaign”, and Gillette introduced its first lady shaver. By the end of the second world war, most western women were removing both leg and underarm hair. These days the trend has extended to pubic hair, with many women opting for a “Brazilian”, leaving just a narrow landing strip, or going the whole hog with a “sphynx”. Even men are becoming more hair-averse. Most shave their faces, but some go so far as to remove hair from their back, buttocks and scrotum – a procedure jauntily named a “back, crack and sack” wax.
Given the time, expense and pain involved, why are we so keen to be smooth? When Susan Basow, a psychologist from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, asked women why they shave, they said it made them feel more feminine and attractive. Indeed, her own studies reveal that Caucasian women with leg and underarm hair are perceived by both women and men as less attractive than the same women without hair. The hairy women were also judged to be less intelligent, less sociable, less happy and even less moral.
Basow believes that the hairless ideal for women exists for several reasons. The first is to exaggerate the differences between women and men. Body hair, being a product of the male hormone testosterone, is considered manly. “As gender roles increasingly overlap in the social sphere, gender differences are being more heavily inscribed on the body,” she says. Secondly, by removing body hair, women are making themselves appear younger, more innocent and virginal. Third, the hairless ideal may exist to tame women’s sexuality. “There are very old associations of hair and power, hair and sexuality,” says Basow. And finally, both men and women may want to distance themselves from their animal roots, she says.
“Hairy flesh is the ideal home for ectoparasites such as ticks and biting flies, which carry diseases”
Pagel has a different explanation. “We use hair-free skin as a billboard to attract prospective mates, to advertise that we have good genes,” he explains. “It’s like saying ‘Look at this large area of my hair-free skin – look how unmarked and unblemished it is. I don’t have any parasites living on me – mate with me’.” He points out that the largest area of hair-free skin is the back. “Perhaps this is why so many women wear clothes that bare their back, and why men find it attractive.” The desire to advertise good genes could also explain why men too may want hairless backs.
In an ever more crowded world, there are also practical reasons for removing hair. In his new book The Naked Woman, Desmond Morris points out that underarm shaving limits the smelly signals sent out to strangers. Perhaps we are also trying to cheat sexual selection. If we have evolved to prefer the look and feel of smooth skin and now find ourselves in a world where it has become socially acceptable to expose most of our bodies, then why not use the available technologies – shaving, waxing, electrolysis and even laser treatment – to make ourselves more attractive.
Whatever the reason, this hairless social norm is incredibly powerful in the western world, as Julia Roberts discovered. She didn’t keep her underarm fur for long. Even five years on from the hair-raising incident, people are still talking, and writing, about it.
“Hairy women were judge to be less intelligent, less sociable, less happy and even less moral”