Did you know there are approximately five million hair follicles on the human body?
So why exactly have we been removing our body hair for the last few hundreds of years?
Well, you might chock that up to societal and cultural norms.
Why do we have body hair?
Well, to answer that, we have to go back to the beginning.
Millions of years ago, the ancestors of human beings were covered in hair.
The reason for this was due to a number of functional purposes, explains Jablonski.
[Body hair] keeps mammals warm.
Hair is really, really useful.
Most mammals, including our closest relatives,the bonoboand the chimpanzee, are covered in hair.
So for us tonothave much body hair now is pretty noteworthy, Jablonski says.
At what point in time did humans begin to lose hair?
They were active, walking, running, really, really active creatures.
Why do we have body hair?
You’re born with all of them, says Mariwalla.
You don’t develop more as you get older.
[Hormones] change the hair follicle to grow hair that’s coarser and thicker.
But going back towhywe have hair in specific places in our bodies is actually quite fascinating.
So its this remarkable, important structure.
Underarm and pubic hair may have stuck around because they helped disperse odor molecules.
Eyebrows, on the other hand, provide an entirely different purpose than that of underarm or pubic hair.
And what about the hair youcantnoticeably see on the body?
Just know its still there and its function is substantial.
So you’ll never get pimples on your palms and soles."
Well, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
We tend to think, Oh, these signals are very ancient.
These practices are very ancient.
This is a pretty recent obsession.
Jablonski estimates the practice of body hair removal started about only 500 years ago.
(Remember #freeyourpits?)
It’s really wonderful when people examine those social norms and say, hold on, who started this?
This is a bunch of nonsense, says Jablonski.
And they realize, Hey, I can be a beautiful person inside and out without following these practices.
It is tremendously liberating.
I’m doing just fine.
People feel a lot of freedom now.
For starters, theres shaving, the act of removing hairwith a razor.
She recommends shaving with acream or gelto keep the skin hydrated.
The process of shaving is almost like exfoliating that top layer of skin, she says.
So, it’s like a two for one.
Tweezing, on the other hand, pulls the hair directly from the follicle.
Any time you pull a hair from a follicle, it’s always going to grow back.
But its going to take longer than when you only remove it from above the skin.
Waxing andsugaringuse the same mechanism as tweezing but with warm substances (i.e.
There are also depilatory creams.
So then you basically then just wipe it away.
Lasers target the pigment in the hair follicle and because of that, theyre not effective on light hair.
It’s an investment, but it’s one that will last a lifetime.
While fairly common, ingrown hairs can become quite painful and possibly lead to infection if left untreated.
The Bottom Line
Body hair is a natural, functional part of the human anatomy.
