When it comes to removing body hair, beauty standards in the western world have become so widespread that conservative estimates says that 99 percent of American women have tried some form of grooming, and at least 85 percent regularly remove hair from their faces, armpits, legs and bikini lines.
Seán Moncrieff will be finding out all about it today when he talks to Rebecca Herzig, the writer of Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. She will guide him through the history of female beauty and the tools used to create it, from clamshell razors to diode lasers.
Tune in live today at 2pm: www.newstalk.com/player/
Surprising though it may seem, however, a thick full-body coat of hair was once considered the epitome of female sexuality, during Medieval and Renaissance periods.
Everyone knows the story of Mary Magdalene, the wanton harlot (though most modern theologians actually think she was a noblewoman) with the heart of gold who helped Jesus Christ. Well, once upon a time, artists became obsessed with depicting her covered completely from head to toe in body fur.
The Ascension of Mary Magdalene by Jan Polack, 1500 [Wikipedia Commons]
Some of these versions of Mary Magdalene would be see her sprouting a fuzzy covering all over her body, while others would see the hair as an extension of her long luscious locks, making her look something like a modern Halloween costume version of a ‘Sexy Cousin It’ from the Addams Family. Regardless, Christian worshippers living a few hundred years ago were privy to the knowledge that when it came to Mary Magdalene, the collar matched the cuffs.
Artists living in the 15th century started to produce the hairy Mary in order to make a more sexualised version of her, to emphasise the lascivious nature of her life before Christ redeemed her in the eyes of God. In addition to the body hair, which was used to represent a wild and pagan lifestyle, these versions of Mary were also made to look increasingly salacious. In fact, the emphasis on her body hair was also a motif common in the period used to suggest sexually promiscuous wild women, whose fur coverings had allusions to a lack of morality and the devil.
It’s an usual metaphor that seems completely at odds with contemporary ideals of hyper sexualisation, but if Lady Gaga at the 2009 Much Music Awards is anything to go by, the look is due a comeback...
Lady Gaga, 2009 [Pixabay]
