Were Cavemen the first to discover how to remove hair?

So how did we get to the age of laser hair removal treatments, waxing and everything else related with removing the evil and unwanted hair?

 

Books and children’s programmes depict ‘cavemen’ as small, club wielding, hairy savages. For those of us old enough to remember him, ‘Captain Caveman’ springs to mind.

It’s thought that primitive man took to shaving as a way of keeping lice, ticks and other vermin from nesting in their very overgrown locks. You could just imagine that ‘Eureka’ moment – man removes offending tick from woman’s armpit, and removes a clump of hair at the same time with his sharp edged stone. “Fantastic” he must have thought, “if we get shot of all our hair, bugs and other nasties can’t make their homes on us!”

 

Hair removal in those days was predominately for practical reasons, not the fashion statement it is in today’s society where it’s thought to be a mortal sin if you do not keep up with your personal grooming.

 

Singeing the hair was also common practice, although it’s not an idea www.ebeautyproducts.co.uk would promote! The process involves a heated stick placed on the hair that then burns off. I think I would rather take my chances with the sharp edged stone.

 

Even cavewomen were part of the hair removal revelation. They developed creams from arsenic and quicklime, that when rubbed onto hair, it would fall straight out. Other ingredients they would have used would have been cat faeces, blood, starch and viper snakes. Fortunately for modern day women, we do not need to go these great lengths anymore, as evolution has produced much kinder and gentler creams that do the same job.

 

During the evolution process, the sharp flint changed into an object more recognisable as a razor, albeit large and very threatening looking, but allegedly safer non-the-less, and by safer, I mean a few less cuts. It’s understood that the Egyptians were among the first to use this more sophisticated idea of shaving, using a copper blade with a handle embellished with designs.

 

The Egyptians also claim to be the first to discover that beeswax was a great way to remove those unwanted hairs, a discovery that was to shape the beauty industry thousands of years later.

With the arrival of the Romans, shaving was taken to the next level with the opening barber shops especially for hair removal, effectively the first beauty salons no less. The opening of barber shops was a move based on

Alexander the Great’s obsession with removing hair, an obsession that helped to popularise it. The Roman women were as equally absorbed in the hair removal phenomenon as the men and had their own products beside the razor, including pumice stones and tweezers.

 

The pain we endure in the fight against unwanted hair in the modern world is painful enough, but it would seem that our ancestors we not phased by it at all. Even if it was painful, would hair removal have come to halt? No. As with our aged counterparts, vanity keeps us at it. Cleopatra had the right idea, find a form of hair removal that is less painful but just as effective. She used ‘Sugaring’, clearly a more comfortable option of the time.

 

Then there was threading - how on earth do you discover that a length of cotton can remove hair? Imagine an ancient Egyptian playing with a piece of cotton that had come lose from her toga. As she twiddles with it mindlessly in her hands, she accidently catches a stray leg hair, removing it completely from the skin. Checking it’s not a fluke, she continues to twist the piece of cotton on the remaining hair and ‘Voila’ it rips it clean out. This method of hair removal is still popular today.

 

Flamboyant wigs were extremely fashionable during the middle ages. To wear these wigs correctly ‘one must shave ones head’, which wasn’t a problem for the women of this era as they all seemed to have been hair free anyway. Hair removal was very high maintenance in those days, as shaving and plucking on a daily basis was common place amongst these ladies.

Queen Elizabeth I was renowned for not having ‘too much’ hair. I believe she had some sort of hair loss condition, but her supporters didn’t think like me, they followed suit by copying her style. It would probably have appeared to the rest of the world that the ‘English’ were born hair free!

 

As time goes on, an L-Shaped razor is invented in France. Jean-Jacque Perrett, a French barber, thought he would try and make razors safer. He introduced a guard to help to keep the blade steady whilst shaving his clients. It helped, but it didn’t really make shaving any safer.

 

It took an Englishman to really understand exactly what a razor should look like. He invented a razor that would be more recognisable in today’s world. William Henson, took the initiative to place the blade perpendicular to the handle, thus making shaving quicker and easier.

 

The easily recognisable red and white barber shop sign became associated with shaving towards the later part of 1800s. These shops began to sell shaving products, like creams, lotions and aftershaves, to ensure a more pleasurable shaving experience. There are still barbers around today that offer the ‘wet shave’  to its clients.

 

Gillette – a company that has been the face of razor blades for over a hundred years completely revolutionised shaving. The disposable razor, consisted of two blades that could be replaced when blunt, took over the world. 

 

Even their marketing strategy was second to none and ahead of any competition of the time, supplying troops fighting in the WWII with razors. Every soldier was given a Gillette razor as part of their kit. It was as if Gillette wanted to reinforce their world domination in the razor world; if our brave boys are using our razors, civilians will follow suit – very clever, and it worked.

 

The 1940s was a very fashionable and elegant era and every woman looked exceptionally well groomed. The women loved these new double blade razors too, using them to shave anywhere where hair sprouted. Razors and creams (creams that had very much improved since cavemen times) enabled more women to remove hair quickly and effectively.

 

The 1960s saw scientists develop the first laser hair removal treatment. They were marketed as a permanent solution to unwanted hair, but it quickly became apparent that the new system merely ‘reduced’ hair growth; it did not eliminate it completely.  The treatments also proved too painful and were shelved.

 

It wasn’t until 1995 that the ‘hair reduction’ issue was readdressed, and modifications made. The new systems would now directly target hair melanin and the risk of burning skin or follicle damage was dramatically reduced.

  

21st century technological advancements has meant that laser hair removal treatments has evolved into multi-billion pound industry, with laser hair removal treatments available in most beauty salons. TRIA took the initiative and led the way forward by taking laser treatments one step further. They developed a Laser Hair Removal System that could be used at home.

It wasn’t long after the TRIA launch that other brands hit the market with their versions of Home Hair Removal Kits:

 

                                            

   

IPL is the latest development in laser technology. The introduction of the IPL8000 from RIO now takes the effort out of removing hair, making it more comfortable and easier to use. Its larger head enables more hair to be removed at a fraction of the time of its predecessors.

 

To date, the most effective way of removing excess hair is with laser treatments. Although all of today’s modern methods, shaving, waxing and threading all work well and are much kinder to us than those of many moons ago, laser hair removal remains the number one option for permanent hair removal.

 

So now in 2010, thousands of years after the flint razor, hair removal is readily available to all of us, and it has to be said, in much less painful ways.

 

I wonder what those cavemen would have thought of it!