I Don - Ministry of Waxing

Polly Vernon – wax junkie | The Times
untapped market of women.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article2998891.ece
03/05/2011 21:29
The campaign began in earnest in 1915 when Harper’s Bazaar ran an advert featuring an
image of a young woman in a sleeveless dress, whose arms were arched above her head,
revealing hairless armpits. The strapline ran: “Summer dress and modern dancing
combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.”
Hygiene was invoked as a secondary reason for getting shot of underarm hair, although
campaigns relied mainly on the ancient impetus to be cool. “The woman of fashion says
the underarm must be as smooth as the face,” ran another ad. By 1922, women both in the
US and in the UK seemed to have accepted the idea that they should shave their armpits.
Advertising campaigns no longer focused on selling the idea of hairlessness itself, but had
shifted to distinguishing between the merits of different processes and products.
Convincing women to shave their legs took longer; but by the Forties, when rationing
meant that skirts were shorter and stockings sheerer (if they existed at all), and Betty
Grable’s hair-free legs had become a saucy visual shorthand for patriotism, the idea of
depilating the lower half of the body began to resonate. Bikini waxing didn’t become
popular until the late Eighties, as anyone who has ever enjoyed the hairily illustrated
images of the Seventies classic The Joy of Sex will testify. Extreme bikini waxing gained
currency in the mid-Nineties when New York’s J. Sisters started treating quote-happy
celebrities, after which Roberts brought it to London.
And now, yes, it seems that we are all depilating. When I ask the female faction on Twitter
how they feel about their body hair, several hundred rush to tweet back about their
depilatory habits. While they vary dramatically, every last one of them is at least doing
something.
But of course we are. We’re surrounded by a hairless female aesthetic. The bodies of the
celebrity women and anonymous models on whom notions of prettiness are founded are
waxed and tweezered, IPL-treated and photoshopped into perfectly depilated visions of
egg-smooth gorgeousness. Pornography is popularly assumed to hold increasing sway over
what we wax and how often. As porn gets more available through the internet, so the
average woman’s perceived obligation to wax further and higher appears to increase.
(Although it should also be pointed out that Ancient Greek statues show adult women to
be pubic hair-free. Maybe this aesthetic ideal isn’t so porno-derivative after all.)
Trends in how we remove hair ebb and flow. The latest diktats issued by Hollywood
stylists suggest somewhat terrifyingly that shaving excess hair from the faces of female
celebrities is an increasingly common practice. “Shaving rids the face of that fine fuzz that
laser hair removal can’t pick up,” says Kate Somerville, a Los Angeles facialist of some
standing. “It doesn’t grow back thicker or darker. That’s an old wives’ tale.”
Any time a celebrity woman dares to be seen in public displaying so much as a suspicion
of body bristle, all hell breaks out. Body hair makes headlines, causes ructions. The latest
depilatory refusenik is Irina Shayk, supermodel, girlfriend of Cristiano Ronaldo and
Swimwear Illustrated cover girl. In late February, Shayk was snapped by paparazzi on her
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