gender

It is a norm for women in the U.S. to shave their armpits, but this is not the norm elsewhere, even in countries that have relatively a lot in common with the U.S. (like France I’ve been corrected). How did armpit shaving become the norm in the U.S.? And who benefited from this?

Vee the Monsoon sent us the following commentary and ad. It turns out, women shave in the U.S. today, in part, because of a concerted marketing effort on the part of companies that stood to profit from the creation of such a norm with the creation of anxiety about “objectionable hair.”

From The Straight Dope:

…U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of… the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn’t know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair. To be sure, women had been concerned about the appearance of their hair since time immemorial, but (sensibly) only the stuff you could see. Prior to World War I this meant scalp and, for an unlucky few, facial hair. Around 1915, however, sleeveless dresses became popular, opening up a whole new field of female vulnerability for marketers to exploit…. the underarm campaign began in May, 1915, in Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the upper crust. The first ad ‘featured a waist-up photograph of a young woman who appears to be dressed in a slip with a toga-like outfit covering one shoulder. Her arms are arched over her head revealing perfectly clear armpits. The first part of the ad read “Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable
hair.

From the May 1915 issue of Harper’s Bazaar:

Thanks Vee!

NEW!  Another example from the U.K., 1934 (found here).  This one encourages the dissolving of armpit hair as a way to fight armpit odor:

At the Los Angeles Times, found via Scatterplot.

There are other things interesting about this graph too.  (1)  The overall increase in the percentage of the U.S. population who attends and graduates college… and thus changing ideas about who “needs” a college degree.  (2) The fact that the gender difference wasn’t extreme in the late 1800s at all and increased in the early 1900s. (This is in contrast to most students understanding of history, in my experience, as a linear story of progress from backwards to enllightened.)  (3)  The spike in college enrollment and graduation after WWII (GI Bill… but how does that explain the stats on women?).  (4)  The weird dip in 1950s (I don’t know what that’s all about).  And, (5) the period of near parity in the 1960s.  (In the comments, Penny points out that I mis-read the graph in haste.  I apologize.)   (3) The weird dip for people born in the 1950s and coming of age in the 1970s (I don’t know what that’s all about).  And, (4) the period of near parity for people born in the 1960s and coming of age in the 1980s. 

See the accompanying article at the New York Times.

This ad appeared in a 1970s high school newsletter in Indianapolis:

Found at Vintage Ads.

Camilla P. sent us this international sampler of Coke Zero ads. She says all of them that she found use the whole “zero” is manlier than “diet” strategy (see the first two below), except the one in Australia which links a sip of Coke Zero with orgasm (see the third video).

From Britain:

From Brazil (we’d love someone to translate, although we think we get the gist):

From Australia:

If you liked that, see this remarkable Orangina commercial.

Two readers, Breck and Miguel, sent in this post:

Boingboing put up this post that shows how common “spread legs” imagery is in old book covers. A commenter to that post pointed out this example (found here) from the Broadway version of Cry-Baby.:

Another commenter thought this FatBoy Slim album cover is interesting:

And there’s this Pooh-Man album cover:

And:

Miguel pointed out that the exact same stance can seem threatening or sexual inviting, depending on whether it’s a man or a woman in the pose.

Thanks to Breck and Miguel for sending these along!

NEW: Larry sent along this image from the June 2008 issue of Esquire magazine (p. 112), which also uses the “spread legs” motif:

“Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.”

If only. I have started vacuuming my dogs, which seems more efficient than letting them shed and then vacuuming their hair off the carpet, but that’s a long way from just being able to hose the house down every day.

This image, found here, is a good illustration of visions of the future and the intense belief in science and technology to completely change daily life (except who does housework) that was so common in the 1950s.
It could also be useful for a discussion of how new household appliances and technologies actually changed women’s lives. In some cases, new electrical appliances clearly reduced women’s domestic workload. My great-grandma had a lifelong devotion to Franklin D. Roosevelt because his New Deal rural electrification project eventually made it possible for her to get an electric washer. She had 7 kids and swore to me multiple times that the electric washing machine was the single greatest thing that ever happened to women (birth control being a close second). On the other hand, as more household appliances became available, our standards of cleanliness increased, so in many cases women ended up doing more housework in an effort to meet the more stringent cleanliness (and to use their electric vacuum to vacuum a peacock-fan-shaped pattern into the carpet, among other useful skills some home economics courses imparted).

Thanks to Ben G. for sending this along!

In case you thought this was a new phenomenon:

Found here thanks to Jason S.

Fellow blogger, Brett, specializes in counseling adolescent boys.  He says, no matter what they come in for–skipping school, fighting, arson–they always get around to asking, “How do you know when a girl likes you?”