Hair removal is not something that came to be in fashion recently. In has a long history and ancient cultures considered smooth and soft skin to be synonymous with beauty. The ancient Egyptians were very familiar with this long before the suburban housewives, or the metrosexual men started taking it up. A smooth and soft body was a sign of beauty and youth in Egypt in the times of the Pharaohs. They used creams and waxed with sticky emulsion made of honey and olive oil.

Later the Ancient Greeks also adopted this ideal of beauty, as can be seen in their sculptures and paintings of the female and male bodies. The Greeks believed women showing hair in public was ugly and a sign of lack of civilization. Ladies in the upper class always made sure to remove it. They would pluck or singe off their hair. The same was true with the Romans later, with young ladies waxing from an early age by using tweezers, which were called ‘volsella’ and had a version of a cream called the ‘dropax’.

Waxing fell out of favour during the 14th century AD when Italian Queen of France Catherine de Medici forbade it for her women. Softness and smoothness was rediscovered in the sixties with the invention of the bikini. Nowadays, of course men are also increasingly jumping on the ‘waxing’ wagon, with larger numbers going to beauty parlous to get their body hair removed.