How did the women get rid of body hair in sixteenth century?

Question

I've always wondered it.

No stupid answers please, it's a serious question

Answer 1

for the most part they didn't.

Answer 2

SORRY! But they did not!

It was wild and in style!!!!!! lol

I mean DON KING!

Thank God! times have changed, I mean for some people. lol

Answer 3

Only some people did, like the very rich or the queen or whatever...but when they did, they plucked it. Even their armpits.

I saw it in a book in the school library.

They had like tweezers, but bigger, that could take out lots of hair in one go.

OWWWWWWWWW is all I can say to that :)

Answer 4

European women didn't on the whole do it .........................but Arabic and Indian women did either by the use of a blade similar to a razor or by sugaring same with the Japanese which are cultures that viewed bathing as a norm unlike the more northern women who bathed minimally

Answer 5

for all of you saying they didn't do it here is a lil bit of history for you. the removal of body hair dates back to the ancient Egyptians and was brought into Europe by the Romans. so how about you pick up a book and learn something before ranting about hings you know nothing about.

Answer 6

hygiene wasn't so important back then - seriously

Answer 7

Easy answer, they didn't!

Answer 8

They did not.

Answer 9

wear many cloths i guess

Answer 10

Mostly women shaving their legs started in the early 1900s, it was part of an ad campaign run by the Gillette shaving company to try to sell more razors by including the other half of the population.  They started it as well to remove lice and appear clean. I personally love inventions like this as I am not a bush man.

Answer 11

By the mid-fifteenth century, portraits documented that fashionable European ladies plucked their eyebrows and shaved some of the hair above the natural forehead to achieve the then much prized, high forehead.  Women also rubbed their children's foreheads with walnut oil to prevent hair growth.  From the Renaissance, several recipes existed for depilatories to remove unwanted facial hair.

The general maxim for the removal of body hair for Northern Europeans* [in most cases] would have been "out of sight, out of mind".  Consequently, the most fashion-conscious women in the United States and the United Kingdom didn't start shaving under their underarms until about 1915 and didn't start shaving their legs until the 1920s when their legs became more visible because of rising hemlines.

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* P. S. for Rexcalib -- According to the depilatory link, many a Middle Eastern bride had all her body hair removed the night before her wedding.  The Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, and Syrian peoples (among others) removed body hair rather than just facial hair prior to modern times, but they didn't live in a climate where it got really cold in the winter, which might also account for infrequent bathing in places like France, England, and Germany before the 18th and 19th centuries (at which time spas became quite popular among the upper classes).

Of course, the Church (and most notably St. Augustine) frowned upon anything that even hinted of either vanity or sexual indulgence, so the art of removing unwanted body hair may have passed from mother to daughter without being put in written form.  

Even so, shaving the underarms and legs was new--and somewhat scandalous--to a lot of German and English war brides who married American GIs after World War II (or at least so I have been told by some of them living in the Killeen/Fort Hood, Texas, area).

Answer 12

They did not. This all a rather modern practice. And all do not do it today. In some countries, even today, it would be illegal. Remember YOU are in a very independent country!

Answer 13

They didn't they were just hairy. It's natural! The people back then were smelly too, they only washed once a month or 6  times a year or something.

Answer 14

They didn't dude.