The Power of Advertising

I, like many other women, shave my legs nearly all year round. I have done for a while now, and it never crossed my mind not to. The very idea of allowing the spiky black hairs to grow as nature intended is not one I find attractive. In fact quite the opposite.

Nowadays unshaven legs on a women does not have positive connotations. Most men find it unattractive, and I certainly do not know of many young women who are brave enough to expose hairy legs in public.

However, what surprised me, is that the idea of shaving one's legs has in fact only been around since the First World War (about 1915). Before this it would seem that both men and women went about their daily lives without casting a second thought to the hair on their bodies - something that may seem strange to us now.

When skirts became shorter and sheer stockings came into fashion it became obvious when a women had unshaven legs. However I am not sure as to what extent this would have influenced societal norms had it not been for the advertising.

Big companies soon realised that they could exploit this new 'hair removal' culture, and thus the fashion was born. Endless advertising campaigns begun, with captions such as: "the fastidious woman today must have immaculate underarms if she is to be unembarrassed." This idea of shaming women into removing hair from their bodies is what caused such a dramatic cultural shift. Whereas before it had been acceptable to be hairy, now it was something to be ashamed of. Moreover the reasons for the shame were always centered around the idea of pleasing men. Some adverts read "he'll never guess you shave." And the principle message was that shaven legs and underarms were essential for pleasing a man.

I think that the strength of this pressure, and the fact that it revolved around an issue which preoccupied the majority of women at this time (namely finding a man to marry), is why we feel obliged to have perfectly smooth skin at all times.

Regardless of your opinion, I think that is safe to say that the power of advertising is perhaps stronger than we might have guessed. That is to say that these clever companies highlighted a weakness in the minds of women worldwide, namely their desire to be deemed attractive, and thus harnessed this insecurity and used it to their own advantage, selling countless millions of hair removal products over the following decades...

Written by Lili

Picture credit: Ellen




http://www.dailylife.com.au/dl-beauty/hair/when-did-we-decide-women-should-shave-their-legs-20150526-gh9ao1 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/10968221/What-do-men-think-about-women-with-hairy-legs.html