Quote:
Originally Posted by djetz
...Nobody shaved their armpits until the 1930s. That trend was started by American fashion magazines, because companies that made shaving gear bought advertising space in those magazines and started insisting that the female models had shaved armpits, so that the shaving companies could expand into the female market. ...
|
Not quite accurate (otherwise the post is excellent). The trend can be spotted to 1915 quite closely. (The 1920s flappers all had shaved pits.) Before that time, women's dresses always concealed the armpits. Fashion began to change abruptly with WWI (skirts got shorter, too), and once the pits were exposed women began to shave them. It was made feasible by the safety razor, which had come onto the market big time about a decade before. Razor advertising certainly helped the trend once it started.
Bush trimming/shaving was given a big impetus by the coming of bathing suits with ever-narrower crotches - though it's hard there to figure which was chicken and which was egg.
BTW the above applies mainly to USA, Britain, and the British dominions. Continental women generally shaved neither pits nor legs until after WWII.