Humans are the only mammals to have hair on the genital areas. These hairs are associated with very special sweat glands which emit odorous hormones intended to stimulate the desire of the opposite sex. The aphrodisiac scents then flow along the pubic hair to lure the average person, provided of course that the hygiene is not too relentless.
In women, armpit hair trap odors and undoubtedly have another essential function: thanks to the maternal odor that he recognizes from birth, the baby becomes familiar with his mother, calms down and triggers a sucking reflex.
beard hair and mustache are useless, if not to highlight the mouth by emphasizing the lips and to brandish a “potential male” indicator sign, which can be spotted from afar. The ethologist Desmond Morris therefore believes that a shaved man seems less aggressive and erases the most particularly visible expression of his virility and … his sexuality. At the rate of ten minutes a day of shaving, men spend three months of their entire life domesticating their hairy standard.
Why track hair? “Man is a monkey who has betrayed”, already recognized the Romanian philosopher and writer Cioran. It is enough to observe our chimpanzee cousins to see that we left feathers during evolution and lost quite a bit of hair, until we became naked apes.
Imagine that our hairs are the remnants of the ancient scales worn by the saurians. Like all nails, hooves, feathers, claws and hair in creation, they are essentially made of a hard, water-insoluble sulfur protein, keratin.
For hundreds of thousands of years, natural selection has made people less and less hairy, with Asians, Indians or Africans practically beardless, and other men a little more hairy. No doubt a question of sensitivity to the male hormones that orchestrate the development of hair from puberty.
Culture got involved too and hair has always been domesticated, even among so-called primitive peoples. In sad tropics, Claude Lévi-Strauss says that the Caduveos of Brazil have a real phobia about hair, going so far as to pluck their eyebrows and eyelashes. All peoples have eradicated body hair, associating it with animality, with the possible exception of Mexicans. The wives of Spanish colonists let their fleece grow, including on their legs or mustaches, to distinguish themselves from Indian women considered to be of a less noble race than theirs.
In the West, the fashion for shaved legs followed that of sea bathing and short skirts in 1920. But it was with nylon stockings and the end of the war that it was anchored forever in the hearts of women. . So much so that the height of negligence is now not to wax.
Pubic hair has suffered a special fate. In all cultures and at all times, they are irremediably associated with sexuality. They explicitly show that the individual has reached sexual maturity. They advertise sex, underline sex, highlight it. Hence the need to camouflage it. And when fashion steps in, the hunt is endless. We see more and more young women getting waxed. They don’t feel “sharp” when they’re not clear. Whether influenced by advertising, porn or religion (pubic hair removal is recommended by Islam), the result is there: minimalist rectangular cuts (metro ticket style), Brazilian sizes (the same thing with a small triangle on top), or nothing at all, like the little girl, pure and virginal.
Psychoanalysts attempt explanations on the unconscious motivations that animate them. “This hunt for hair presents itself as an attempt to return to the paradise lost that would be childhood, nudity, purity, a regression to a prepubertal stage, indicates the psychoanalyst Francis Hofstein,” (1).
Our society would also reject bestiality and certain fantasies of erotic violence, illustrated by “the difference between the teddy bear man, with the soft coat and the gorilla man, hairy, menacing, fascinating”.
Men themselves do not escape the diktat of smoothness via advertising and the role played by the gay milieu. They also shave, wax and laserize (shoulders, back, chest, and even pubis). All the elements therefore seem to be in league against this animal past, favoring a complete exposure!
(1) Le Monde, October 12, 2005. Francis Hofstein is the author of body love, ed. Odile Jacob.
